What you need to know about Pokemon

All right, everyone. Time for a little history lesson, don't worry, this will be fun.Pokemon is, as you should know by now a franchise created by Satoshi Taijiri in 1996. Now, we will learn a little bit more about the man behind the franchise itself. Satoshi Taijiri was born on August 28th, 1965. His father had been a Nissan car salesman and his mother a housewife.Tajiri grew up in Machida, Tokyo, which at the time still maintained a rural atmosphere. As a kid, Tajiri enjoyed insect collecting as a hobby; it would prove to be an inspiration for his later video game work. In fact, other children called him "Dr. Bug",and he wanted to be an entomologist when he grew up.As the urban areas of Japan spread and more land was paved over, many of the places for hunting bugs were lost. Tajiri wanted his games to allow children to have the feeling of catching and collecting creatures as he had.

He became fascinated with arcade games as a teenager and used them to pass the time, much as we do, though his parents thought him a delinquent for it, which hopefully ours don't. He particularly enjoyed playing Taito's Space Invaders, which drew him into other video games. His interest eventually evolved into attempting to plan his own games. He took his Famicom apart to see how it worked, and ended up winning a contest for a video game idea sponsored by Sega. At the age of 17,Tajiri began writing and editing a "fanzine" (a fanmade magazine) called Game Freak, which focused on the arcade game scene, from 1981 to 1986. Game Freak was handwritten and stapled together. Nonetheless, Ken Sugimori, who later illustrated the first 151 Pokémon, saw the magazine at a dōjinshi shop, and decided to get involved As more contributors came to Game Freak, Tajiri began to realize most games were lacking in quality, and he and Sugimori decided the solution was to make their own games.

Because of his fascination with video games, Tajiri frequently cut classes; because of which, he almost didn't' graduate. His father tried to get him a job at The Tokyo Electric Power Company, but Tajiri didn't want to, and said no. However, he did manage to take make-up classes and eventually earn his high school diploma.Tajiri did not attend college but instead went to two-year technical school at Tokyo National College of Technology, where he studied electronics.

With the help of Ken Sugimori and other friends, Tajiri formed Game Freak and much later the design studio known as Creatures. When Tajiri discovered the Game Boy and the Game Boy Link Cable, it gave him the image of insects traveling along the wire, reminding him of his childhood hobby. Tajiri was also heavily influenced by the Ultraman fantasy television show, Ultra Seven, in which the protagonist used giant monsters contained within small capsules to help him fight. Together, these two sources gave him the idea for a new game called Capsule Monsters. After several failed attempts at pitching this idea to Nintendo, Tajiri's new friend Shigeru Miyamoto pitched it to the company, and Nintendo began to fund the project, spending six years developing the games that would become a worldwide sensation. Due to trademarking issues, the name "Capsule Monsters" was changed to "Pocket Monsters". The original artwork for the games was drawn by Tajiri's friend, artist Ken Sugimori, while the music and sound effects were composed by Junichi Masuda. After debugging was completed, Shigeki Morimoto programmed Mew into the game. However, Game Freak planned to keep the 151st Pokémon hidden from the public unless it was needed for a post-launch event. The project nearly drove Game Freak to bankruptcy. Five employees quit due to the financial conditions, and Tajiri worked many unpaid hours. Later, Taijiri would state that he slept 12 hours, and then worked for a full 24 hours straight. This irregular method gave him ideas, he said.

However, it all payed off in the long run.The first Pokémon games, Pokémon Red and Green Versions, came to the Nintendo Game Boy system in Japan on February 27, 1996, which was the fulfillment of Satoshi Tajiri's dream and allowed people of all ages to catch, train and trade 151 creatures and become a Pokémon Master.

Initially, the Pokémon games had modest sales. However, after players discovered Mew in the games,the magazine CoroCoro announced a "Legendary Pokémon Offer" to distribute Mew to twenty entrants. The contest received 78,000 entrants, and the sales of the Pokémon games quickly increased. Due to high sales, Pokémon Red and Green were swiftly followed up with Pokémon Blue, which had improved graphics and sounds. Mew was unique as "the Phantom Pokemon", as people called it, because there was no way of knowing about it except through word of mouth at the time, and it could only be encountered through a game glitch or by hacking the game, which made it very interesting and mysterious. After the games, a Pokémon Trading Card Game was developed by Media Factory with its own set of rules. The first set of cards was released on October 20, 1996, containing 102 cards, and became very popular. The franchise also won many manga interpretations, the first being Pokémon Pocket Monsters by Kosaku Anakubo, which was first collected and published in November 1996 by Shogakukan. This was chiefly a gag manga, using crude humor and slapstick, starring a Trainer named Red and his rude Clefairy.

The popularity of the franchise also led to an anime series based on the games, premiering in Japan on April 1, 1997. The main character was a young Pokémon Trainer named Satoshi (after Satoshi Tajiri, later dubbed in English to Ash Ketchum), based on Red. Another character introduced in the first episode was Satoshi's rival, Shigeru (after Shigeru Miyamoto, later dubbed in English to Gary Oak), based on Blue. The anime quickly became very popular, and soon a manga series based on it named The Electric Tale of Pikachu was written by Toshihiro Ono. The first volume of the series was first published on October 28, 1997. The more famous manga in the western world, however, is Pokémon Adventures, the first volume of which was first published in Japan on August 8, 1997. This is the longest running manga in Pokémon history, as it is still ongoing today, over fourteen years later. Several other manga series were published in that era, including Pokémon Zensho and Miho Asada's Pokémon Gotta Catch 'Em All.