Satoshi Tajiri

Life

Satoshi Tajiri was born on August 28, 1965, in Setagaya, Tokyo, and grew up in Machida, on the city's western edge, when the area still kept a rural atmosphere. He spent his childhood collecting insects and trading them with friends; the other children called him "Dr. Bug," and he wanted to become an entomologist. As Machida was paved over and the habitats disappeared, he later said, he wanted to give children something of the feeling he had known: searching for creatures, catching them and sharing them.

As a teenager he fell hard for the arcade. Taito's Space Invaders (1978) hooked him, and he admired Namco games built around a single, clear action, such as Dig Dug. His parents feared the pastime marked him as a delinquent, and he cut so many classes that he needed make-up work to finish high school. Instead of university he took a two-year technical program in electronics and computer science at the National Institute of Technology's Tokyo college. He took apart his Famicom to see how it worked and won a game-idea contest sponsored by Sega.

Work

In the early 1980s Tajiri began writing and editing a handwritten, stapled fanzine called Game Freak, full of strategies and hidden secrets for arcade games; its best-selling issue, on scoring high in Xevious, sold more than 10,000 copies. The illustrator Ken Sugimori discovered it in a dōjinshi shop and joined as its artist. Convinced that most games were poorly made, the two decided to make their own. Tajiri studied the Family BASIC kit to learn Famicom programming, and on April 26, 1989, the fanzine became Game Freak, a development company. Its first game, the puzzle-action Quinty (released in North America as Mendel Palace), was published by Namco. Tajiri also freelanced as a games writer for Japanese magazines including Famicom Tsūshin.

In 1990 he saw the Game Boy's link cable and imagined insects crawling back and forth along it. He conceived a game in which players would catch creatures, raise them and trade them with friends. The trading idea, by his account, also grew from frustration with Dragon Quest II, where a rare item could only be obtained from a rare enemy drop. Nintendo staff struggled to grasp the pitch, but they respected his reputation, and Shigeru Miyamoto became his mentor on the project.

The game took six years. It nearly bankrupted Game Freak: five employees quit, there was often barely enough money for salaries, and Tajiri took none. Investment from the company Creatures Inc., in exchange for a share of the rights, let the team finish. In between, Tajiri designed Yoshi (1991) and Mario & Wario (1993) for Nintendo and directed Pulseman (1994) for Sega. Pocket Monsters Red and Green, released in Japan on February 27, 1996, for a Game Boy that many in the press considered finished, started slowly. Then sales kept climbing. Rumors of Mew, a 151st creature programmer Shigeki Morimoto had slipped in without Nintendo's knowledge and that Tajiri then used to encourage trading, spread from schoolyard to schoolyard.

Pokémon Red and Green was a gentle Japanese RPGs (JRPG) at heart, with turn-based battles, a journey across a region and a rival, but its genius was social. No single cartridge contained every creature, so completing the collection required trading with other players, and battling a friend's team required a link cable. Tajiri made sure Pokémon only faint rather than die; he did not want to equate death with losing a game. The result launched the Monster-Collecting RPGs as a genre and a franchise of games, cards, anime and films that reinvigorated Nintendo's handheld business.

Tajiri directed the series through Pokémon Gold and Silver (1999) and Crystal (2000). From Ruby and Sapphire (2002) onward he moved to executive director and then executive producer, the role he has held on the main series ever since, while also serving as president of Game Freak.

Legacy

Few game designers have created anything as widely loved as Pokémon, and Tajiri did it by drawing on the most personal of sources: a childhood hobby threatened by suburban sprawl. He cites Miyamoto as his great influence, along with Godzilla, Ultraman and other Japanese television and film of his youth. His achievement was to treat the role-playing game not as a story experienced alone but as a reason for children to meet, talk and trade. IGN named him among the top 100 game creators of all time, and he and The Pokémon Company's Tsunekazu Ishihara received a Special Award from the Computer Entertainment Developers Conference in 2011.

For visitors to the Japanese Line: Console RPGs, Tajiri represents the moment the console RPG escaped the television and went into children's pockets.