Chapter 1 Dr Bug In 1996 the Nintendo company released a popular new video game called Pokémon It allowed players to collect and battle monsters The game became an instant hit It soon launched a gaming revolution Pokémon shaped millions of childhoods Today it is still wildly popular with gamers of all ages And it all began with a young bug collector named Satoshi Tajiri Satoshi Tajiri was born on August 28 1965 in Tokyo Japan His father was a car salesman and his mother was a homemaker The Tajiris lived in Machida a town near Tokyo As a child Satoshi spent much of his time hunting bugs in forests near the Tama River He carefully studied each insect he found Because of this hobby Satoshi’s friends called him Dr Bug Satoshi also loved television and comics He watched anime and read manga comic books As Satoshi grew older he stopped hunting insects Instead Satoshi began arcade games playing fun fact Tajiri has said that if he didn’t become a game creator he would have worked in the anime industry 4
Satoshi particularly enjoyed catching stag beetles He would place large rocks under trees Later he would lift the rocks to find stag beetles beneath them After high school Satoshi went to college But he often skipped classes to go to the arcade After college Satoshi’s father tried to get him a job as an electrical repairman But Satoshi wasn’t interested His parents began to lose hope in his future They did not know that their son would soon develop one of the most successful video games in history 5
Chapter 2 Game Freak After college Tajiri’s passion for gaming continued He spent a lot of time learning new gaming tricks Today video gamers can buy manuals and watch videos online to improve their gaming skills But in the early 1980s gamer resources were limited Tajiri wanted to read about his favorite arcade games But there were no guides available So he decided to write his own He called it Game Freak magazine Tajiri handwrote the first issue of Game Freak His friend Ken Sugimori provided the illustrations Tajiri then photocopied the pages and stapled them together The first issue of Game Freak released in March 1983 It reviewed different arcade games It also gave readers tips for playing the games A bookstore agreed to sell Tajiri’s magazine To Tajiri’s surprise the magazine was a huge success Tajiri used his earnings to do research for more issues Later in 1983 Tajiri dedicated an issue to the game Xevious The issue was a massive hit Tajiri sold 10,000 copies fun fact Satoshi’s favorite anime was Ultraman 6
With Game Freak Tajiri created a community for gamers Today Pokémon fans have a similar community and meet to compete and share their knowledge Tajiri had several contributors who helped him produce Game Freak They and Tajiri felt most video games were of low quality This led Tajiri to another idea What if he made his own game 7
