Satoshi Tajiri

Biographical Summary

Satoshi Tajiri was born in a suburb of Tokyo. As a child, he loved to explore his still-rural home to capture and collect insects, which would inspire him to create Pokemon years later. As he grew older, however, many of these bug hunting places were urbanized, and his interests turned to video games. In 1982, he started a gaming magazine called “Game Freak”. After writing about games, he became more interested in making them, and learned to do so by taking apart a Nintendo Entertainment System and figuring out how to program for it. In 1989, he evolved the successful company Game Freak into a game production company, and shortly after it pitched its first game.

Tajiri has been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome.

He operates under a ridiculous sleep schedule, sleeping for twelve hours and then working for twenty-four hours straight, explaining that it helps him come up with new ideas.

Work

Tajiri started the company Game Freak, which produced several games for Nintendo and Sega, such as “Yoshi” and “Mario & Wario”, as well as independent games, such as “Pulseman”. Of course, he is most known for being the creator of Pokemon, which he was inspired to make after seeing how Gameboys could be connected.

Pokemon introduced the idea of using the Gameboy link technology to trade, rather than compete, and also focused on keeping violence as low as possible. Tajiri explains, “I was really careful in making monsters faint rather than die. I think that young people playing games have an abnormal concept about dying. They start to lose and say, 'I'm dying'. It's not right for kids to think about a concept of death that way. They need to treat death with more respect.” (Quote from http://pokedream.com/pokemon/infocenter/tajiri.php)

Tajiri has named Shigeru Miyamoto as a mentor figure to him, and a major influence on his work. He is also inspired by movies and cartoons, and says that if he weren't making video games, he would be working in the anime field.

Project