Satoshi Tajiri

Satoshi Tajiri, born August 28, 1965 in Machida, Tokyo, is the creator of the video game series Pokémon, as well as the entire idea of the Pokémon franchise. Tajiri is also the founder of the video game developer Game Freak, which plays the main role in development of the Pokémon games, and another company, Creatures. Tajiri

Tajiri, during his childhood, was very interested in video and arcade games. He was a regular at his local arcade, and, during a contest, even won a Space Invaders machine. He was also interested in manga and animé.

As Satoshi's interest for video games grew, he decided to create the video game magazine Game Freak in 1978, as there wasn't any other media covering Pokémon at the time. Game Freak magazine was a guide to current popular video games that him and his friends put together themselves &mdash; the magazine eventually became somewhat popular.

With Satoshi's newfound success in video games, he decided to get into developing them, and turned Game Freak's focas into developing video games. Game Freak's first published game was released in 1989, titled Mario & Luigi and released for both the Game Boy and the Famicom (Nintendo Entertainment System).

Tajiri was very interested with capturing, collecting, and trading insects as a child. However, in his early teens, the areas where him and his friends liked to hunt for bugs were replaced with modern establishments and conveniances. It was from these childhood experiances that he got the idea for his next games; Pocket Monsters Akai and Pocket Monsters Midori were both released in 1996, instantly skyrocketing to success and helping to boost sales of the Game Boy. The games were translated into english as Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue and were both huge successes in North America, too. In fact, the games were such as success that to this day Game Freak has had continued success with continuing the Pocket Monsters series, even merchendising it into an animé, movies, collectable cards, a manga, and toys.