History of Pokemon

by Marie Brunkhorst

Senior, 2016

With the hype over the upcoming game “Sun and Moon,” Pokemon has reached its 20th Anniversary celebration, as said in the bulbapedia website. The platforms for the series range from the old Gameboy system all the way up to the Nintendo 3DS console; the franchise managed to hold its status of popularity since it had shown up back in the 90’s.

That’s quite a long time for any company. So how did it get to be so successful in the first place?

It all started when a young boy grew up in Machida, Tokyo, collecting insects or tadpoles from the ponds, fields, and forests as a hobby. His name was Satoshi Tajiri.He lived in a conformist area, but he had no interest to go to any college and rejected his father’s desire to want him to get a job as an electrical-utility repairman. As a teenager, he became fascinated with arcade games. A particular favorite of his was “Space Invaders,” which became the starting point of his gaming journey, as he said in the Time interview, “The Ultimate Game Freak.” Eventually, he thought about making his own games for others to enjoy. He even took apart his Famicom system to see how it worked. Cutting classes and never graduating high school, he upset his parents deeply, who felt that he was throwing his life away.

Though Tajiri ended up taking make-up classes and receiving his diploma, he only attended a two-year technical degree at the Tokyo National College of Technology, where he majored in computer sciences and electronics. Around the year 1981, at age 17, with the help of Ken Sugimori (who would later create the original 151 Pokemon), he began to write and edit a fan magazine by hand known as Game Freak, which focused on mostly arcade games. Later, the dream of creating their own game was realized once again. Doing heavy research, they purchased the hardware for game development. The magazine evolved into a game company of the same title in 1989, as found on gamesetwatch.com.The two partners pitched their first game to Namco, which was called “Quinty,” an arcade-styled platform, and they ended up publishing it. Afterwards, they continued working on their magazine.

It was in the year 1990 when the concept of Pokemon was first conceived. Tajiri came up with it after he saw a Gameboy, the new hand-held device at the time, and upon realizing that two players could connect and communicate, he came up with the idea of children interacting with each other by trading and battling one another. In other words, he returned to his childhood activities by creating Pokemon. He pitched his idea to Nintendo, who didn’t quite understand what it was all about, but due to his game designing reputation, they were willing to work with him. Tajiri had gained a mentor known as Shigeru Miyamoto, to help guide him through the creative process, according to the Time article, “Beware of the Pokemania.”

Tajiri’s inspirations came from multiple places, one from a TV show called “Ultra Seven,” where the creatures they used for battle were kept in consoles to assist the protagonists in their battles. Other sources were from “Godzilla” and “Ultraman.” He claims to have also been heavily influenced by Miyamoto himself, his style often resembling Miyamoto’s art.

The game was first called “Capsule Monsters,” (as stated in firsttoknow.com) but during the six years in development, it was changed to “Pocket Monsters,” or for short, “Pokemon.” It nearly bankrupted Game Freak, five employees quit due to a low pay wage, and Tajiri had to live off of his father’s income. A company known as Creatures Inc. had helped invest into the project, in return for one-third of the rights. On top of that, Tajiri was also working on other games as well as his own, assisting the Mario spinoff games “Yoshi,” “Mario & Wario” (only released in Japan) and “Pulseman.”

Finally, in 1996, the games “Pokemon Red & Blue” were released to the Gameboy system, as found in ign.com. Nobody expected it to do well, believing that the Gameboy was a dead-end console; however, sales of the game steadily increased as time went by. Soon it became one of the most popular games on the market. One of the reasons why this was so, is because of the Pokemon known as Mew. Mew was included last second by Tajiri, his reasoning was to promote trading and interactions from other players, so he had it as a contest giveaway to twenty lucky trainers. It was such a sudden process, that even Nintendo wasn’t aware of it. Nonetheless, Mew helped raise the interests of many, therefore leading to more sales of the product. His plan had worked flawlessly.

Tajiri was awarded with praise, IGN pronouncing him as one of the top 100 best game creators of all time. Alongside Tsunekazu Ishihara (founder of the Pokemon Company), Tajiri was given the Special Award from the Computer Entertainment Developers Conference in 2011.

Though as the world well knows, Pokemon didn’t stop at Red and Blue. Three years later after the previous successes, the sequels known as “Gold and Silver” came out, which included new Pokemon, new badges, and most importantly for that time, it was in full-blown color. In 2002, they continued with their series, later creating the games “Ruby and Sapphire.” The list would then carry on to “Diamond and Pearl,” “Black and White,” “X and Y,” and finally, to the most recent one, “Sun and Moon.” Not to mention the reboots of previous games, such as “HeartGold and SoulSilver,” “Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire,” “FireRed and LeafGreen,” spin-off games such as “Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and Pokemon Ranger,” and the third options that came exclusive with the usual doubles, such as “Yellow Version,” “Emerald Version,” “Platinum Version,” “Green Version” and finally, “Crystal Version,” as found on nintendo.wikia.com.

“Pokemon” is one of the world’s most phenomenal successes, becoming an icon that everyone identifies, millions adore, and reaching up to the standards of other beloved titles such as “Mario,” “Sonic” and “Zelda.” And it’s all thanks to a young social outcast who liked arcade games and insects.

http://nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon_games

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Sun_and_Moon

http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2008/04/column_game_mag_weaseling_just.php

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,34342-2,00.html

http://firsttoknow.com/the-complete-history-of-pokemon/

http://www.ign.com/wikis/pokemon-red-blue-yellow-version/History

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2040095,00.html