Satoshi Tajiri
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Satoshi Tajiri (田尻智 Tajiri Satoshi?, born on August 28, 1965) is a Japanese electronic game designer and the creator of Pocket Monsters, better known as Pokémon.
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[edit] About
Satoshi Tajiri was born in Machida, Tokyo in 1965 to a Japanese family. As a little boy, he discovered the beauty of the forests. Young Satoshi used to wander and gather insects, in order to complete his collection, he would also trade with his friends. A passion for video games was also familiar to Satoshi from an early age. As he had grown up, he became a video games tester for magazines.
In 1982, Satoshi decided, along with his friends, to create a magazine about new video games and comic books entitled "Game Freak". The magazine became very popular and Satoshi was encouraged to write and publish two books, named "CAP Land" and "Catch 'em all CAP land". In the 1980s, the crew of "Game Freak" made the decision to develop video games of their own. The entire crew left its one-room office and moved to one in one of the Nintendo buildings in Japan, and developed new video games such as "Yoshi's Egg".[citation needed]
In the year of 1991, when the Game Boy appeared, Tajiri imagined a game, based on the insects he used to collect as a child. The idea of catching and collecting monsters was new, but the base of Pokémon already existed. The idea of trading them came to Tajiri's mind when he saw two kids playing the Game Boy next to each other. He came to Shigeru Miyamoto, the famous creator of "Super Mario", and together they have developed the link technology, which is still being used today. With the approval of the Nintendo company, Tajiri and his staff began the process of developing the game. It took them 5 years to complete the game, the longest time in Nintendo's history. It was just obvious that the success was pending, and the game, now known as Pokémon, was followed by other games, TV series and Movies.
[edit] Childhood and education
As a young boy, Satoshi lived in a suburb of Tokyo and loved to collect bugs. In the late 1970s, the forests and fields that Satoshi loved as a child were paved over by apartments and parking lots. This saddened Tajiri, as modern kids wouldn't be able to go bug-catching as he did.
Satoshi did not like school. His father wanted him to be an electrical utility repairman, but this is not what he wanted. His ideas for Pokémon grew, as he wanted to give modern children the chance to hunt for creatures as he did. Satoshi got into games when he was at technical school, spending all his time in arcades. He was such a big fan that one local arcade gave him a Space Invaders machine to take home.
[edit] Game Freak
In 1982, Satoshi and his friends James Hanzatko and Yuusuke Santamaria formed a games magazine under the name of Game Freak. One of his Game Freak friends was Ken Sugimori, who drew all of the Pokémon's images. In the early 1980s, he won a contest sponsored by Sega involving making a video game. He later had his first video game, Quinty, published by Namco for the Nintendo Famicom. In 1991, Satoshi discovered the Game Boy. When he first saw Link Cables, he imagined insects creeping along them, and the Pokémon idea was born. The game was given some initial funding and concept work from another game design studio, "Creatures." Tajiri named his development company "Game Freak", after the magazine, and thus it can still be seen at the start of Pokémon games.
[edit] Nintendo
Tajiri went to work for Nintendo and spent the next six years working on Pokémon. He became friends with Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Pikmin, and Donkey Kong, who also became a mentor to Tajiri. As a tribute to Tajiri and Miyamoto, Ash Ketchum (the anime counterpart of "Red" in the games) is named Satoshi and Gary Oak (the anime counterpart of "Blue" in the English games, and "Green" in the original Japanese version) is named Shigeru in the Japanese version of Pokémon.
Most recently, Tajiri (along with Nintendo Co. Ltd. president Satoru Iwata) served as an executive producer for the Game Boy Advance game ScrewBreaker (スクリューブレイカー 轟振どりるれろ sukuryūbureikā gōshin dorirurero?), released outside of Japan as Drill Dozer.
Satoshi Tajiri has allegedly been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome.[1][2] He has been described by Nintendo officials as exceedingly creative but "reclusive" and "eccentric."[3]
[edit] References
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Satoshi Tajiri profile at MobyGames
- Interview with Satoshi Tajiri from Time Asia
