Satoshi Tajiri
Satoshi Tajiri (Japanese: 田尻 智, born August 28, 1965) is the creator of Pocket Monsters, also known as Pokémon.
As a child, Tajiri lived in Machida, a suburb of Tokyo, and loved to collect insects, hunting them in ponds, fields and forests, constantly looking for new insects and coming up with new ways to catch insects such as beetles. He had such an interest in collecting and studying insects, that it earned him the nickname "Dr. Bug" among his peers.
Tajiri did not like school. His father wanted him to be an electrical utility repairman, but this is not what he wanted. In the late 1970s, the fields and ponds that Tajiri loved as a child were paved over by apartments and parking lots, and his idea for Pokémon grew, as he wanted to give modern children the chance to hunt for creatures as he did. Tajiri 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.
At 16 Tajiri won a contest sponsored by Sega for a game design concept.
In 1982, at 17 years of age, Tajiri and his friends formed a games magazine by the name of Game Freak. A friend, and contributor to Game Freak, was Ken Sugimori, who would later become the illustrator and designer of all of the Pokémon images, as well as the human characters and other aspects of the games. Throughout the 80's, Game Freak magazine had modest sales, and became quite popular among the gaming crowd. In the 90's, Game Freak started moving into game development, and they developed many titles, including a number of titles for Nintendo. In 1991, Tajiri discovered the Game Boy. When he first saw two children playing together using the Link Cable he imagined insects crawling along the cable between the two systems. This sight inspired Tajiri, and, the idea for Pokémon as we know it was born. The game was given some initial funding and concept work from another game design studio, Creatures, Inc.
Tajiri went to work for Nintendo and spent the next six years working on Pokémon. Shigeru Miyamoto, the man behind Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Pikmin, and Donkey Kong, was assigned to help in the development of Red and Green. During this time Tajiri came to admire Miyamoto as a mentor. As a tribute to Miyamoto and Tajiri, Ash Ketchum is named Satoshi and Gary Oak is named Shigeru in the Japanese version of Pokémon. Likewise, in the Japanese versions of the original Generation I games and their Generation III remakes, Satoshi and Shigeru are default choices for the names of the player and rival, just as Ash and Gary are in the English-language versions.
Tajiri has allegedly been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of Autism. He has been described by Nintendo officials as exceedingly creative but "reclusive" and "eccentric."
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