Satoshi Tajiri

IGN named Tajiri one of the top 100 game creators of all time, mainly for his ability to have built Pokémon into a "worldwide phenomenon". Electronic Gaming Monthly credited Tajiri as one of the 10 most influential people who made the modern video game market. Video game magazine Edge placed Tajiri on their list of the "Hot 100 Game Developers of 2008". Tajiri, alongside Tsunekazu Ishihara, received the Special Award from the Computer Entertainment Developers Conference in 2011. The Economist has described Pokémon as "Japan’s most successful export."

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. The Pokémon games were not expected to do well, but sales steadily increased until the series found itself among Nintendo's top franchises. Rumors of a hidden Pokémon creature named Mew, which could only be obtained by exploiting programming errors, increased interest in the game. 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. The franchise helped Nintendo's waning sales. 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. After the completion and release of Red and Blue in Japan, Tajiri later worked on 1997's Bushi Seiryūden: Futari no Yūsha. Tajiri continues to be involved in the more modern Pokémon games as well. For Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, he supervised the process from start to finish and approved all the text. While developing games, Tajiri works irregular hours, often laboring 24 hours at a time and resting 12 hours.

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. He also worked on 1994's Pulseman.

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.

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. 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.

Satoshi Tajiri (Japanese: 田尻 智 , Hepburn: Tajiri Satoshi, born August 28, 1965) is a Japanese video game designer and director best known as the creator of Nintendo's Pokémon franchise and one of the founders, and President of video game developer Game Freak. A fan of arcade games, 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. Tajiri continued to work as director for the Pokémon series until the development of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, when he changed his role to simply executive producer.

Satoshi Tajiri was born on August 28, 1965, in 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.