Satoshi Tajiri (田尻智) born on August 28, 1965 is a Japanese video game designer best known as the creator of Pokémon.
As a young boy, Satoshi lived in Machida, 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 children would not 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.
In 1982, Satoshi and his friends James Hanzatko and Yuusuke Santamaria formed a game magazine, called "Game Freak." One of his Game Freak friends was Ken Sugimori, who would go on to draw all of the concept art for Pokémon. 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, released outside of Japan as Mendel Palace. In 1991, Satoshi discovered the Game Boy. When he first saw Link Cables, he imagined insects creeping along them, and the Pokémon game franchise was born. The game was given some initial funding and concept work from another game design studio, Creatures Inc. Tajiri named his development company "Game Freak" after his early magazine. He also made Pulseman for the Sega Mega Drive.
Tajiri went to work for Nintendo and spent the next six years working on Pokémon. He later became friends with Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox and Pikmin, 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 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. He has been described by Nintendo officials as exceedingly creative but "reclusive" and "eccentric."
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