"Satoshi Tajiri : The Real Pokemon Master"

"Satoshi Tajiri : The Real Pokemon Master"

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."

source: Wikipedia.org (article) , Google Image Search (Pictures).

"Pokemon : I wanna Catch them all!"

"Pokemon : I wanna Catch them all!"

Pokémon (ポケモン) is a media franchise published by the video game company Nintendo and created by Satoshi Tajiri around 1995. Originally released as a pair of interlinkable Game Boy role-playing video games, Pokémon has since become the second most successful and lucrative video game-based media franchise in the world, behind only Nintendo's own Mario series. Pokémon properties have since been merchandised into anime, manga, trading cards, toys, books, and other media. The franchise celebrated its tenth anniversary on February 27, 2005, and as of 23 April 2008 (2008 -04-23), cumulative sales of the video games (including home console versions, such as the "Pikachu" Nintendo 64) have reached more than 186 million copies.

The name Pokémon is the romanized contraction of the Japanese brand, "Pocket Monsters" (ポケットモンスター),[as such contractions are very common in Japan. The term "Pokémon", in addition to referring to the Pokémon franchise itself, also collectively refers to the 493 fictional species that have made appearances in Pokémon media as of the recent release of the newest Pokémon role-playing game (RPG) for the Nintendo DS, Pokémon Platinum. Like the words deer and sheep, the word "Pokémon" is identical in both the singular and plural, as is each individual species name; in short, it is grammatically correct to say both "one Pokémon" and "many Pokémon". In November 2005, 4Kids Entertainment, which had managed the non-game related licensing of Pokémon, announced that it had agreed not to renew the Pokémon representation agreement. Pokémon USA Inc., a subsidiary of Japan's Pokémon Co., now oversees all Pokémon licensing outside of Asia.

"Here starts the great adventure..."

In a world much like our own, there exists over 450 creatures of all shapes, sizes, colors, and personalities, called pocket monsters("pokemon" for short.) Some pokemon are Fire types, some are Water types, some are Grass types, and so on. Some live on land, some in the water, and some live underground. But all pokemon are equipped with special attacks that pertain to whatever type of element they are. Certain people, called pokemon trainers, use pokemon for battles. When drawn into the capture device called a pokeball, pokemon become easily portable. The goal of a pokemon trainer is to have their pokemon battle against other pokemon in order for their pokemon to get stronger.

If a pokemon gets enough battle experience, it could evolve into another, more powerful creature. In order to be a good pokemon trainer, you must capture a lot of pokemon, train some of them to be really strong in pokemon battles, and most importantly, you must get your pokemon to love you and trust you, or else they won't obey you! The Pokemon anime follows the adventures of Ash Ketchum, a pokemon trainer from Pallet Town, who travels the different regions of the pokemon world with his friends, meeting all kinds of people and pokemon, stopping Team Rocket from stealing and controlling rare pokemon, battling against other trainers and gym leaders, and all the while, Ash tries to fulfill his dream of becoming a Pokemon Master and befriend all the pokemon he can.

source: Wikipedia.org and www.animeyume.com/pokemon/pksynopsis.html (Article) and Google Image Search (Pictures).