What inspired satoshi tajiri to create pokemon

Like another Nintendo legend, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, Tajiri’s most popular work has been directly inspired by his childhood experiences and hobbies. While Miyamoto’s Zelda was the product of boyhood explorations, however, Tajiri’s role-playing juggernaut is the product of, as you may expect, boyhood insect collections. Tajiri grew up in Machida, a city that now forms part of the sprawling metropolis that is greater Tokyo. As a boy in the 1960s and 1970s, though, it had a quaint, almost rural atmosphere, which led Tajiri to a hobby of collecting local bugs and insects. He was so mad for it, in fact, that his classmates would call him “Mr. Bug”, and as a child he wanted to grow up to be an entomologist (someone who studies insects). As happens when kids get older, though, interests come and go, and by the time he was a teenager Tajiri’s focus had shifted from harvesting bugs to pumping coins into arcade games like Space Invaders. Tajiri (pictured, left) isn’t as well-known as one would expect given the popularity of his creation. Nintendo representatives This means that, unlike most other famous game developers, Tajiri never went to college or university. Instead, he studied electronics at a Tokyo technical college, and in 1981 started up a little video game fanzine called Game Freak. While little more than a few pages of writing crudely printed and stapled together, the zine was distributed enough to catch the attention of additional contributors, including, most c...

In July 2016, the internet was flooded with stories (some . The game's popularity even managed to resurrect an old, fake interview with the game's creator, Satoshi Tajiri, in which he purportedly stated that Pokémon was deliberately anti-Christian, and more than that, was created with Satanists in mind: In a rare interview with Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri, he admits that the games were created as a backlash against his Christian parents. He also says that the games are tailored towards an anti-Christian sentiment or Satanism. The interview, conducted by Time about the continued success of the Pokémon series, took a sharp left turn when Tajiri was asked about the inspiration for the games. The following is an excerpt from the interview: [...] Tajiri: Yes. Pokémon is essentially the correct answer towards life, not Christianity. Everything presented in the game is the opposite of what Christians may believe. Some have said that the game promotes voodoo or magic, and I agree in the sense that there are many things that occur in nature that are unexplainable. Furthermore, the violence in the games is unparalleled. It may not show up in the actual graphics, but the brutality is made especially explicit in the Pokédex entries. Nature, again, played a big role. Time: So those who say that the game is anti-Christian are correct? Tajiri: I suppose so. I mean, some could say that the game supports Satanism. I don't officially celebrate it, but I can understand why people would be...

We're partnered with We all know Pokémon as what it is today, but how did it all come to fruition? Pokémon went through a lot of changes, and it took series creator Satoshi Tajiri years of hard work and dedication to see it all come to life. Here’s the story of how it all happened… Inspiration Born August 8, 1965, Satoshi Tajiri ( 田尻 智) grew up in Machida, Tokyo. His father was a Nissan Salesman and his mother was a stay-at-home mom. When Tajiri was a child, Machida was a rural area that had forests, lakes and natural environments for him to explore. In an interview with Time , Tajiri said that he would spend his early years catching and studying insects, so much so that other kids would call him ‘Dr. Bug’. He even wanted to become an entomologist, however construction of shopping malls and apartment buildings stripped away a lot of the nature that he had loved to explore. “As a child, I wanted to be an entomologist. Insects fascinated me. Every new insect was a wonderful mystery. And as I searched for more, I would find more. If I put my hand in a river, I would get a crayfish. Put a stick underwater and make a hole, look for bubbles and there were more creatures.” – Satoshi Tajiri With his hometown becoming less green with each passing day, bugs migrated away from Machida and Satoshi Tajiri shifted his love to video games and arcades. He would study the strategies and mechanics of his favorite video games, and he even took apart his Nintendo Famicom just to see how it al...

ASIANOW - TIME Asia | Pokémon: The Ultimate Game Freak - Page 1 | 11/22/99 TIME Asia Home Current Issue Magazine Archive Asia Buzz Travel Watch Web Features Entertainment Photo Essays Subscribe to TIME Customer Services About Us Write to TIME Asia TIME.com TIME Canada TIME Europe TIME Pacific TIME Digital Asiaweek Latest CNN News Young China Olympics 2000 On The Road ASIAWEEK.COM CNN.COM east asia southeast asia south asia central asia australasia BUSINESS SPORTS SHOWBIZ ASIA WEATHER ASIA TRAVEL From TIME Asia Culture on Demand: Black is Beautiful The American Express black card is the ultimate status symbol Asia Buzz: Should the Net Be Free? Web heads want it all -- for nothing JAPAN: Failed Revolution Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori clings to power as dissidents in his party finally decide not to back a no-confidence motion Cover: Endgame? After Florida's controversial ballot recount, Bush holds a 537-vote lead in the state, which could give him the election TIME Digest FORTUNE.com FORTUNE China MONEY.com TIME Asia Services Subscribe to TIME! Get up to 3 MONTHS FREE! Bookmark TIME TIME Media Kit Recent awards The Ultimate Game Freak TIME Tokyo bureau chief Tim Larimer speaks with Satoshi Tajiri, the quiet, complex man who created a video game in which no one dies--and who in the process launched the worldwide phenomenon known as Pokémon. In this extended interview, Tajiri explains, among other things, the logical trajectory from bugs to Pikachu. Satoshi Tajiri: "When you get...

Growing up, Tajiri exhibited characteristics typical of those with autism. He had a few interests that he focused on intensely, and didn’t enjoy school. In his youth, Tajiri was obsessed with collecting bugs. His friends called him “Dr. Bug” because he was always searching for and finding new bugs to add to his collection. He was also distracted and bored in school. As he grew older, his interest in video games eclipsed his earlier obsession with bug collecting, and he would sometimes skip school just to play in the arcade. With the mountains of knowledge and interest he had in video games, he started a simple magazine at age 17 with tips, strategies, and hacks he and his friends had discovered. He called it Game Freak. It started out as a few pages stapled together, but he eventually partnered with an artist named Ken Sugimori for custom illustrations for the magazine. Over time, Game Freak became a bigger and bigger publication, reaching over 10,000 readers at its peak. It was at this time that Tajiri realized there were better games that could be made. And he decided to transform Game Freak from a magazine about video games into a creation company itself. Tajiri loved his days collecting bugs and knew others would find it fun to collect and share things, too. And he knew that experience could create an amazing game. His idea was simple—a video game where players could collect and share different characters. He originally called it Capsule Monsters, inspired by a Japanes...

Like another Nintendo legend, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, Tajiri’s most popular work has been directly inspired by his childhood experiences and hobbies. While Miyamoto’s Zelda was the product of boyhood explorations, however, Tajiri’s role-playing juggernaut is the product of, as you may expect, boyhood insect collections. Tajiri grew up in Machida, a city that now forms part of the sprawling metropolis that is greater Tokyo. As a boy in the 1960s and 1970s, though, it had a quaint, almost rural atmosphere, which led Tajiri to a hobby of collecting local bugs and insects. He was so mad for it, in fact, that his classmates would call him “Mr. Bug”, and as a child he wanted to grow up to be an entomologist (someone who studies insects). As happens when kids get older, though, interests come and go, and by the time he was a teenager Tajiri’s focus had shifted from harvesting bugs to pumping coins into arcade games like Space Invaders. Tajiri (pictured, left) isn’t as well-known as one would expect given the popularity of his creation. Nintendo representatives This means that, unlike most other famous game developers, Tajiri never went to college or university. Instead, he studied electronics at a Tokyo technical college, and in 1981 started up a little video game fanzine called Game Freak. While little more than a few pages of writing crudely printed and stapled together, the zine was distributed enough to catch the attention of additional contributors, including, most c...

We're partnered with We all know Pokémon as what it is today, but how did it all come to fruition? Pokémon went through a lot of changes, and it took series creator Satoshi Tajiri years of hard work and dedication to see it all come to life. Here’s the story of how it all happened… Inspiration Born August 8, 1965, Satoshi Tajiri ( 田尻 智) grew up in Machida, Tokyo. His father was a Nissan Salesman and his mother was a stay-at-home mom. When Tajiri was a child, Machida was a rural area that had forests, lakes and natural environments for him to explore. In an interview with Time , Tajiri said that he would spend his early years catching and studying insects, so much so that other kids would call him ‘Dr. Bug’. He even wanted to become an entomologist, however construction of shopping malls and apartment buildings stripped away a lot of the nature that he had loved to explore. “As a child, I wanted to be an entomologist. Insects fascinated me. Every new insect was a wonderful mystery. And as I searched for more, I would find more. If I put my hand in a river, I would get a crayfish. Put a stick underwater and make a hole, look for bubbles and there were more creatures.” – Satoshi Tajiri With his hometown becoming less green with each passing day, bugs migrated away from Machida and Satoshi Tajiri shifted his love to video games and arcades. He would study the strategies and mechanics of his favorite video games, and he even took apart his Nintendo Famicom just to see how it al...

Growing up, Tajiri exhibited characteristics typical of those with autism. He had a few interests that he focused on intensely, and didn’t enjoy school. In his youth, Tajiri was obsessed with collecting bugs. His friends called him “Dr. Bug” because he was always searching for and finding new bugs to add to his collection. He was also distracted and bored in school. As he grew older, his interest in video games eclipsed his earlier obsession with bug collecting, and he would sometimes skip school just to play in the arcade. With the mountains of knowledge and interest he had in video games, he started a simple magazine at age 17 with tips, strategies, and hacks he and his friends had discovered. He called it Game Freak. It started out as a few pages stapled together, but he eventually partnered with an artist named Ken Sugimori for custom illustrations for the magazine. Over time, Game Freak became a bigger and bigger publication, reaching over 10,000 readers at its peak. It was at this time that Tajiri realized there were better games that could be made. And he decided to transform Game Freak from a magazine about video games into a creation company itself. Tajiri loved his days collecting bugs and knew others would find it fun to collect and share things, too. And he knew that experience could create an amazing game. His idea was simple—a video game where players could collect and share different characters. He originally called it Capsule Monsters, inspired by a Japanes...

ASIANOW - TIME Asia | Pokémon: The Ultimate Game Freak - Page 1 | 11/22/99 TIME Asia Home Current Issue Magazine Archive Asia Buzz Travel Watch Web Features Entertainment Photo Essays Subscribe to TIME Customer Services About Us Write to TIME Asia TIME.com TIME Canada TIME Europe TIME Pacific TIME Digital Asiaweek Latest CNN News Young China Olympics 2000 On The Road ASIAWEEK.COM CNN.COM east asia southeast asia south asia central asia australasia BUSINESS SPORTS SHOWBIZ ASIA WEATHER ASIA TRAVEL From TIME Asia Culture on Demand: Black is Beautiful The American Express black card is the ultimate status symbol Asia Buzz: Should the Net Be Free? Web heads want it all -- for nothing JAPAN: Failed Revolution Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori clings to power as dissidents in his party finally decide not to back a no-confidence motion Cover: Endgame? After Florida's controversial ballot recount, Bush holds a 537-vote lead in the state, which could give him the election TIME Digest FORTUNE.com FORTUNE China MONEY.com TIME Asia Services Subscribe to TIME! Get up to 3 MONTHS FREE! Bookmark TIME TIME Media Kit Recent awards The Ultimate Game Freak TIME Tokyo bureau chief Tim Larimer speaks with Satoshi Tajiri, the quiet, complex man who created a video game in which no one dies--and who in the process launched the worldwide phenomenon known as Pokémon. In this extended interview, Tajiri explains, among other things, the logical trajectory from bugs to Pikachu. Satoshi Tajiri: "When you get...

In July 2016, the internet was flooded with stories (some . The game's popularity even managed to resurrect an old, fake interview with the game's creator, Satoshi Tajiri, in which he purportedly stated that Pokémon was deliberately anti-Christian, and more than that, was created with Satanists in mind: In a rare interview with Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri, he admits that the games were created as a backlash against his Christian parents. He also says that the games are tailored towards an anti-Christian sentiment or Satanism. The interview, conducted by Time about the continued success of the Pokémon series, took a sharp left turn when Tajiri was asked about the inspiration for the games. The following is an excerpt from the interview: [...] Tajiri: Yes. Pokémon is essentially the correct answer towards life, not Christianity. Everything presented in the game is the opposite of what Christians may believe. Some have said that the game promotes voodoo or magic, and I agree in the sense that there are many things that occur in nature that are unexplainable. Furthermore, the violence in the games is unparalleled. It may not show up in the actual graphics, but the brutality is made especially explicit in the Pokédex entries. Nature, again, played a big role. Time: So those who say that the game is anti-Christian are correct? Tajiri: I suppose so. I mean, some could say that the game supports Satanism. I don't officially celebrate it, but I can understand why people would be...