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Satoshi Tajiri (田尻智 Tajiri Satoshi, born August 28, 1965) is a Japanese video game designer best known as the creator of Pokémon.
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Education and childhood
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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. 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.
Game Freak
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.
Nintendo
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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 is named Satoshi and Gary is named Shigeru in the Japanese version of the Pokémon anime.
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".[1]
See also
References
- ^ Mary Roach. "Cute Inc.". Wired. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.12/cute.html?pg=3&topic=&topic_set=. Retrieved on 2006-07-08.
External links
- Interview with Satoshi Tajiri from Time Asia
- Satoshi Tajiri at Bulbapedia, The Pokémon encyclopedia
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