- Satoshi Tajiri
nihongo|Satoshi Tajiri|田尻智|"Tajiri Satoshi"|extra=born on
August 28 ,1965 is aJapan ese electronicgame designer and the creator of "Pocket Monsters", known outside of Japan as "Pokémon ".Education and childhood
As a young boy, Satoshi lived in a suburb of
Tokyo and loved to collect bugs. In the late 1970s, theforests and fields that Satoshi loved as a child were paved over by apartments and parking lots. This saddened Tajiri, as modern children would not be able to go bug-catching as he did.Satoshi did not like school. His father wanted him to be an electrical utility repairman, but this is not what he wanted. His ideas for Pokémon grew, as he wanted to give modern children the chance to hunt for creatures as he did. Satoshi got into games when he was at technical school, spending all his time in
arcades .Game Freak
In 1982, Satoshi and his friends James Hanzatko and Yuusuke Santamaria formed a game magazine, called "Game Freak." One of his Game Freak friends was
Ken Sugimori , who drew all of the Pokémon's images. In the early 1980s, he won a contest sponsored bySega involving making avideo game . He later had his first video game, "Quinty", published byNamco for theNintendo Famicom. In 1991, Satoshi discovered theGame Boy . When he first saw Link Cables, he imagined insects creeping along them, and the game was born. The game was given some initial funding and concept work from another game design studio, "Creatures." Tajiri named his development company "Game Freak " after his early magazine.Nintendo
Tajiri went to work for Nintendo and spent the next six years working on Pokémon. Unknowingly to the nintendo company, Tajiri programmed in the legendary pokemon mew that he had designed. While he eventually told nintendo about this pokemon it remained unknown to nintendo that he had left a glitch for users to obtain this pokemon while they planned on releasing it for access on the game only through a special event held by nintendo. For instructions in the use of this glitch go to http://www.pokemonarchive.webs.com. This glitch once discovered became more than Tajiri intended when it was proven by users to allow the obtaining of all pokemon with in the game. In honor of the original intentions of this glitch it is still called "The Mew Glitch" He later became friends with Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Pikmin, and Donkey Kong, who also became a mentor to Tajiri. As a tribute to Tajiri and Miyamoto, Ash Ketchum (the anime counterpart of "Red" in the games) is named Satoshi and Gary Oak (the anime counterpart of "Blue" in the English games, and "Green" in the original Japanese version) is named Shigeru in the Japanese version of Pokémon.
Most recently, Tajiri (along with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata) served as an executive producer for the Game Boy Advance game ScrewBreaker (スクリューブレイカー 轟振どりるれろ, sukuryūbureikā gōshin dorirurero?), released outside of Japan as Drill Dozer.
Satoshi Tajiri has allegedly been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. [cite web|url=http://igo.ampednews.com/features/182/2/ |title=A Salute to Japanese Game Designers|publisher=Amped IGO|author=Amadeo Plaza|date=
February 6 ,2006 |accessdate=2006-07-08] [cite web|url=http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2523&Itemid=2&limit=1&limitstart=9 |title=The Top 100 Game Developers|publisher=Next Generation|date=March 18 ,2006 |accessdate=2006-07-08] He has been described by Nintendo officials as exceedingly creative but "reclusive" and "eccentric." [cite web|url=http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.12/cute.html?pg=3&topic=&topic_set= |title=Cute Inc.|publisher=Wired|author=Mary Roach|accessdate=2006-07-08]References
ee also
*
Pokémon
*Pokémon video game series External links
* [http://pokedream.com/pokemon/infocenter/tajiri.php "Interview with Satoshi Tajiri"] from Time Asia
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