Satoshi Tajiri (田尻 智) is a Japanese video game designer and director who is the creator of the Pokémon franchise and the co-founder and president of video game developer Game Freak.
A fan of arcade games in his youth, Tajiri wrote for and edited his own video gaming fanzine Game Freak with Ken Sugimori, before evolving it into a development company of the same name.
Tajiri claims that the joining of two Game Boys via a link cable inspired him to create a game which embodied the collection and companionship of his childhood hobby, insect collecting.
The game, which became Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green, took six years to complete and went on to spark a multibillion-dollar franchise which reinvigorated Nintendo's handheld gaming scene.
Tajiri continued to work as director for the Pokémon series until the development of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, when he changed his role to executive producer, which he holds to this day.
Tajiri has also worked for other Game Freak projects.
He was also an executive producer on the live-action film Detective Pikachu.
1965
Satoshi Tajiri was born on August 28, 1965, in Setagaya, Tokyo.
Tajiri grew up in Machida, Tokyo, which at the time still maintained a rural atmosphere and was rapidly growing.
As a child, Tajiri enjoyed insect collecting as a hobby, which would be an inspiration for his later video game work.
Other children called him "Dr. Bug", and he wanted to become an entomologist.
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.
He became fascinated with arcade games as a teenager, though his parents thought he was a delinquent for this pastime.
1978
He particularly enjoyed playing Taito's Space Invaders (1978), which drew him into other video games.
Space Invaders got him interested in video games; after playing Space Invaders and its video game clones, he wanted to make his own sequel to Space Invaders.
1981
Tajiri wrote and edited a fanzine called Game Freak from 1981 to 1986, focusing on the arcade game scene.
It was handwritten and stapled together.
Satoshi created the Game Freak fanzine to help gamers with winning strategies and lists of easter eggs.
The highest selling issue, at more than 10,000 copies, details how to get a high score in Xevious.
Ken Sugimori, who later illustrated the first 151 Pokémon, saw the magazine at a dōjinshi shop, and became its illustrator.
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.
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.
1982
He was also inspired by Namco games designed around a single specific action, notably Dig Dug (1982).
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.
Because of his fascination with video games, Tajiri frequently cut classes.
He took make-up classes and eventually earned his high school diploma.
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.
1989
Tajiri and Sugimori evolved the magazine into the video game development company Game Freak in 1989.
Soon after, the two pitched their first game, an arcade-style game called Quinty, to Namco, who published the game.
Tajiri also wrote as a freelance writer for the magazine Famicom Hisshōbon, later called Hippon, and reviewed arcade games for Family Computer Magazine and Famicom Tsūshin.
1990
Tajiri first conceived the idea of Pokémon in 1990.
The idea came together after he saw a Game Boy and the ability to communicate between Game Boys, 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.
Tajiri advanced the connectivity between handheld game consoles beyond Tetris style competition, by suggesting that Game Boys could use their link cables to trade collectibles.
When he first pitched the idea of Pokémon to Nintendo staff, 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.
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.
