Satoshi Tajiri

Satoshi Tajiri was born on August 28, 1965, in Tokyo.[3] Tajiri grew up in Machida, Tokyo, which at the time still maintained a rural atmosphere[4] and was rapidly growing.[5] As a child, Tajiri enjoyed insect collecting as a hobby, which would be an inspiration for his later video game work.[6] Other children called him "Dr. Bug",[4] and he wanted to become an entomologist.[3] As urban areas of Japan spread and more land was paved over, habitats for hunting bugs were lost. Tajiri wanted his games to allow children to have the feeling of catching and collecting creatures as he had.[6]

He became fascinated with arcade games as a teenager, though his parents thought he was a delinquent for this pastime.[3] He particularly enjoyed playing Taito's Space Invaders, which drew him into other video games.[4] His interest eventually evolved into attempting to plan his own games. He took his Famicom apart to see how it worked, and won a contest for a video game idea sponsored by Sega.[4]

Because of his fascination with video games, Tajiri frequently cut classes. He took make-up classes and eventually earned his high school diploma.[7] Tajiri did not attend university, but instead attended a two-year technical degree program at the Tokyo National College of Technology, where he majored in electronics and computer science.[3]

Tajiri wrote and edited a fanzine called Game Freak from 1981 to 1986, focusing on the arcade game scene.[8][9] Game Freak was handwritten and stapled together. It was illustrated by Ken Sugimori.[4] Satoshi created the Game Freak fanzine to help out gamers. It contained tips on winning games, as well as lists of easter eggs in games. The highest number of copies an issue of the magazine sold was over 10,000, attained by an issue detailing how to get a high score in the game Xevious.[10][11] Nonetheless, Ken Sugimori, who later illustrated the first 151 Pokémon, saw the magazine at a dōjinshi shop, and became involved.[12] As more contributors came to Game Freak, Tajiri began to realize that most games were lacking in quality, and he and Sugimori decided the solution was to make their own games.[4] Tajiri studied the Family BASIC game programming package, to better grasp the concepts of Famicom game design. He then purchased the requisite hardware for game development.[9] Tajiri and Sugimori evolved the magazine into the video game development company Game Freak in 1989.[1][13] Soon after, the two pitched their first game, an arcade-style game called Quinty, to Namco, who published the game.[14] Tajiri also wrote as a freelance writer for the magazine Famicom Hisshōbon, later called Hippon,[15] and reviewed arcade games for Family Computer Magazine and Famicom Tsūshin.

Tajiri first conceived the idea of Pokémon in 1990.[4] The idea came together after he saw a Game Boy and the ability to communicate between Game Boys,[4] and Tajiri decided Pokémon made the most sense on the handheld console. When he thought about the link cable being able to interact with two Game Boys, he envisioned bugs crawling back and forth, recalling his childhood love of bug collecting.[10] Tajiri pioneered the idea of connectivity between handheld game consoles, by suggesting that Game Boys could use their link cables in order to have friends do more than simply play against each other.[16] This idea of the two systems communicating with was for the players to be able to trade Pokémon with one another.

When he first pitched the idea of Pokémon to Nintendo, they could not quite grasp the concept, but were impressed enough with Tajiri's game design reputation that they decided to explore it. Shigeru Miyamoto began to mentor Tajiri, guiding him during the creation process.[3] Pokémon Red and Green took six years to produce, and nearly bankrupted Game Freak in the process; often, there was barely enough money to pay the employees.[3] Five employees quit, and Tajiri did not take a salary, instead living off of his father's income.[3] Investment from Creatures Inc. allowed Game Freak to complete the games, and in return, Creatures received one-third of the franchise rights.[17]

Between the approval and completion stages of the project, Tajiri assisted in the design of two Mario spin-off games for Nintendo: Yoshi and the Japanese-only release Mario & Wario.[18] He also worked on 1994's Pulseman.[19]

Once the games were completed, very few media outlets gave it attention, believing the Game Boy was a dead console; a general lack of interest of merchandising convinced Tajiri that Nintendo would reject the games.[3] The Pokémon games were not expected to do well, but sales steadily increased until the series found itself among Nintendo's top franchises.[6] Rumors of a hidden Pokémon creature named Mew, which could only be obtained by exploiting programming errors, increased interest in the game.[3] Tajiri had included Mew in the game in order to promote trading and interaction between players, but Nintendo was not aware of the creature upon release.[20] The franchise helped Nintendo's waning sales.[21] Tajiri deliberately toned down violence in his games. In this vein, he designed Pokémon creatures to faint rather than die upon their defeat, as he believed it was unhealthy for children to equate the concept of death with losing a game.[4] After the completion and release of Red and Blue in Japan, Tajiri later worked on 1997's Bushi Seiryūden: Futari no Yūsha.[22] Tajiri continues to be involved in the more modern Pokémon titles as well. For Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, he supervised the process from start to finish and approved all the text.[23] While developing games, Tajiri works irregular hours, often laboring 24 hours at a time and resting 12 hours.[4]

• Amiibo

• Satoshi Tajiri on IMDb