Pokémon – 25 Year Anniversary
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25 years since Created Many people assume that Ishihara (CEO of Pokémon) is the actual creator Satoshi Tajiri as he makes all the public appearances. Tajiri rarely makes public appearances as he has Asperger's syn- drome and this affects his social abilities Satoshi was obsessed with video games and used to play the in the arcades and almost didn't graduate from High School. He spent so much time in his local arcade that he was given his own ‘Space Invaders’ machine. AK 02/2021 Tajiri did a two year technical degree programme at the Tokyo National College of Technology At 17 years of age, Tajiri started a video games magazine called ‘Game Freak’ which was initially handwritten and stapled together . The legendary Ken Sugimori (Pokémon illustrator) became involved with the magazine after coming across it at a local comic shop. Before the release of Pokémon ‘Red and Green’, Ta- jiri directed two games that were published by two of Nintendos biggest rivals, Sony and Sega. Tajiri directed ‘Smart Ball’ for Super Nintendo which was published by Sony and ‘Pulseman’ for the Sega Gen- esis which was published by Sega. By the time the development on Pokémon ‘Red and Green’ began, the whole process from start to finish was ex- tremely rigorous. The games took six years to complete and nearly caused ‘Game Freak’ to go bankrupt. They barely had enough money to pay their employees, with five of them quitting. Tajiri was so dedicated he did not give himself a salary and was supported by his fa- thers income. AK 02/2021 After the release of the Generation 1 Pokémon games , Tajiri mentioned in an interview, that when developing games, he would work 24 hours straight and then sleep for 12 hours after that. Such a schedule helped him con- ceive new ideas. Tajiri’s favourite Pokémon is the Poliwag, stating that the swirl on the characters belly is actually its internal organs which reflect how a tadpoles organs can be seen through its body. AK 02/2021 .