A boy was so obsessed with bugs,
he needed to catch them all! He started collecting all kinds,
and it eventually inspired him to create his own universe: Pokemon. Today, it is by a long shot the biggest
video game franchise in history. But for a time, the company that
made it was struggling to even pay its staff and a mistake caused the
franchise to almost never exist. This is the story of how Pokemon was made. On August 28, 1965, Satoshi Tajiri was born
to a Nissan salesman and a housewife in Machida, a rural suburb of Tokyo. As a child, he spent his time
hunting and collecting bugs, a hobby that earned him the nickname “Dr. Bug” from other kids. The nickname wasn’t out of
place, as Satoshi dreamt about becoming an entomologist. But as time went on, his interests
changed, as did the town around him. As the years passed, Machida
became more and more urbanized. Trees were cut down, fishing ponds
were replaced by arcades, and the bug populations decreased as
their habitats were destroyed. When Satoshi was a teenager, his
enthusiasm for bug hunting was replaced with an enthusiasm for video games. He spent his time at arcades, so much
so that he cut classes to play games and nearly failed to graduate high school. In fact, he was such a frequent
customer that one arcade gave him a Space Invaders machine to take home. His parents worried that
he had become a delinquent. Satoshi never attended university,
but instead studied electronics for two years at a technical school. His obsession with arcade games eventually
led him to create Game Freak, a homemade arcade magazine, at the age of 17. He would visit arcades for the
hand-written and stapled-together publication, speak to their
owners, and write about tips and cheat codes for arcade games. One of these early issues caught the
attention of another key figure in the rise of Pokemon: Ken Sugimori. Ken joined the fan magazine as an
artist, contributing his iconic style to Game Freak’s illustrations. He and Satoshi quickly became
friends, working on the magazine together until wrapping up the
magazine four years after it began. It wasn’t the end for Game Freak
though, just a metamorphosis. Ken and Satoshi spent the next three
years studying programming to chase a dream, and then remade Game Freak. But this time they weren’t just writing
about games, they were making them. While the two didn’t believe they
could make an arcade game, they saw an opportunity in the Nintendo Famicom,
which had launched six years prior. Their first game, Quinty,
was made as a hobby. It was a puzzle game where players
flipped tiles to avoid and dispose of enemies while trying to rescue
the main character’s girlfriend. Development was unusual. While most game companies make titles
using official development kits, Game Freak didn’t have access to one. Instead, they hacked their
console and learned how to unofficially develop for it. Nintendo wasn’t interested in a game
by a bunch of hobbyists, so Satoshi began shopping the game around. Namco, a Japanese publishing
company, took interest in the title. However, they weren’t willing to
deal with individuals, leading to Game Freak incorporating. After breaking into the
industry, Game Freak began making games for larger companies. Their next title, Smart Ball, released
two years later under the Sony banner for the Super Famicom, or Super Nintendo. That same year, they began working
with Nintendo directly, releasing the puzzle game Yoshi for the Gameboy. The next few years saw a number
of other releases from Game Freak. Two years after launching Yoshi,
they released Mario & Wario for the Super Famicom. They also briefly worked with
Ninendo’s main rival, Sega, releasing the platforming game, Pulseman for
the Sega Mega Drive a year later. But all the while, Game Freak had
been working on a massive project that would soon overshadow all the others. By approaching Nintendo back when they
first began developing games, Satoshi had opened a door with the video game giant. The following years, and Game Freak’s
later releases on Nintendo consoles only served to strengthen the ties
between the two companies, and led him to become friends with Shigeru
Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, and Gunpei Yokoi, inventor of the Game Boy. A year after Game Freak had
released Quinty, Satoshi had been struck by inspiration. Spotting a pair of Game Boys linked
together by a Link Cable, a device that allowed the handheld consoles to
network together, he began imagining insects crawling up and down the wires. Remembering his childhood hunting
bugs, Satoshi came up with a game idea where players could explore, collect
creatures like the gashapon capsule toy machines, and trade them with each other. Pitching the game was
nerve wracking, though. Satoshi was afraid that the executives at
Nintendo wouldn’t get the concept, and had been told that they’d reject it outright. But even with his doubts, he still brought
the idea to the house that Mario built. Just as he’d feared, when Satoshi
first pitched the idea to Nintendo, they weren’t sure about the idea. However, the executives relented
and gave Game Freak the go ahead to get working on it. Shigeru Miyamoto not only backed
the idea, but he also took Satoshi under his wing and acted as a mentor
to the younger game developer. Game Freak had been given the
chance to make the game of Satoshi’s dreams, now all they had to do was
survive long enough to release it… Pokemon’s development was a troubled one. Game Freak almost went bankrupt
during the development cycle, and the company had to take on work for other
companies in order to make ends meet. Not making matters any better were
the Unix computers that Game Freak were developing the games on. The computers crashed often, and four
years in — one crashed so badly that the programmers couldn’t recover the machine,
and that particular machine happened to have all the data for the game, all
the Pokemon, and the main character. According to Junichi Masuda, composer
and one of two programmers for the original Pokemon games, it felt like
if they couldn’t recover the data from the computer, the game was finished. He had to look up English manuals for the
computer in order to get the data back. On top of unreliable machines,
Game Freak also lost staff over the course of development, and the
staff that did stay had to work without pay due to the financial
troubles that Game Freak was facing. But as the years passed, Game Freak saw
the light at the end of the tunnel… only for another issue to loom over them,
threatening the success of the project. Enjoying the story so far? Subscribe to our channel and ring the
bell to get more fascinating stories about today’s biggest companies! After six years, the Game Boy
had lost much of its popularity in the Japanese market. Others in the industry were questioning
how good an idea it was to launch Pokemon for the console, saying
that it wouldn’t sell very well. With release fast approaching, the
team began debugging the game, making sure that everything worked properly. After this, the team was instructed
to not add anything else. However, the debugging process
opened up 300 bytes of space on the game cartridge, just enough
to add Pokemon number 151: Mew. Monster designer and programmer, Shigeki
Morimoto, had included Mew as an Easter Egg: a secret, hidden Pokemon in the game. Originally, he intended to only
let developers have the Pokemon, unless they could find some kind of
post-launch event to include it as. However, due to a glitch, Mew also
appeared occasionally in regular games. Then, Pokemon launched as two
titles: Pokemon Red, and Green. For a while the team was kept in
limbo with no indication of how well the games were even selling,
so they’d travel out to game stores to see how it was being received. At first, Pokemon launched to only
a modest reception, but soon word of the games spread through word of mouth
and sales spiked — partially thanks to rumors of a hidden Pokemon in the game. Even before Pokemon spread
outside of Japan, it was already becoming a franchise. Later that year, the Pokemon
Trading Card Game was released in Japan by Media Factory. The card game had the same addictive
collectability to it, containing not only cards of popular Pokemon,
but also rare foil versions. It also helped that the game
was both fun and competitive. Pokemon wound up selling millions of
copies in Japan, and then launched in the United States two years
later as Pokemon Red and Blue. Despite concerns that Game Freak had
over whether a turn-based roleplaying game would attract an American
audience, Pokemania spread to Game Boys nation-wide all the same. The trading card game made the jump
across the Pacific a few months later, published by Wizards of the Coast,
the same company behind another hit card game called Magic: The Gathering. The cards exploded in popularity,
just like they had in Japan. Satoshi didn’t realize it, but
he hadn’t just created a game, he had made a pop-culture phenomena. Kids took to it in a frenzy, and
some became obsessed with it. What Satoshi also didn’t realize was
that it would pull his company to new heights before dragging it down… Since launching three years prior,
Pokemon had expanded beyond just a pair of games released for
Nintendo’s aging Game Boy console. It had become a trading card game, a hit
anime, and a line of popular merchandise. Pokemon was more than just a media
franchise: it was a way of life. But the series’ meteoric rise among
children worldwide was brewing up a storm of trouble aimed right
back at Saotshi’s dream game. “Pokemon flu” had infected the world,
and parents were becoming worried. The sight of children with handfuls of
Pokemon cards was becoming commonplace at schools throughout the world, leading
to concerns about how the game was impacting children’s ability to learn. Those concerns, along with other
issues like children without Pokemon cards feeling left out, and
children prioritizing the cards over eating lunch resulted in principals banning the cards from schools outright. Some parents feared that the
buying and trading of Pokemon cards was similar to gambling. A group of parents in New Jersey even
sued Nintendo, believing that the card rarity was like racketeering. It wasn’t just the trading cards
that caused controversy though, the animated series encountered
a number of issues as well. Famously, one episode with flashing
red and blue lights caused seizures in 685 children across Japan. Another episode was barred from
air on American television due to a character threatening 10-year-old
protagonist, Ash Ketchum, with a firearm. But there was another controversy
coming out of America. Just like other pop culture
phenomena before it, Pokemon was the subject of its own Satanic panic. Fundamentalist Christian groups
claimed that Pokemon were demonic in nature, and were corrupting the youth. Others took issue with Pokemon
“evolving” into new forms, believing it was a way to teach children
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. But no matter how many controversies
struck Pokemon, nothing seemed able to keep its appeal down. When Pokemon: The First Movie released
a year after the games reached America, it was an instant success and brought in
more than $160 million at the box office. The same year, a special edition
of the first Pokemon games called Pokemon: Yellow was released. It gave the player a Pikachu
as their starter Pokemon, just like in the animated series. But it wasn’t just expansions on
the original game, Pokemon games were spreading far and wide. The same year that Pokemon Yellow
released, a game called Pokemon Snap launched on the Nintendo 64. In Snap, instead of catching Pokemon,
players captured photos of their favorite Pokemon and got high scores
based on posing and shot composition. The next year, a slew of Pokemon games was
unleashed on an audience hungry for more. Pokemon Stadium launched in
America on the Nintendo 64, and let players use their Pokemon
teams from the gameboy games in 3D. There was also a Pokemon puzzle game,
Puzzle League, and a game that came with a microphone to let players
speak to their very own Pikachu and go on adventures, Hey You, Pikachu. And on the Game Boy Color, there was
a video game version of the Pokemon card game, and the next generation
of Pokemon: Gold and Silver. The new games brought players to a
new region, with new Pokemon to catch, new gyms to beat, and in a move that
caught many by surprise, once the main game was completed, the region from
the original Pokemon games would be unlocked for players to revisit — along
with a hidden encounter with the player character from Red and Blue. The new Pokemon games sold
over 20 million copies, and the franchise has only grown since. A year later, Gold and Silver were
joined by Pokemon Crystal, which added new legendary Pokemon to the
game, and gave players the choice between a boy and girl character. In the following years, Ruby and Sapphire,
FireRed and LeafGreen, and Emerald were released for the Game Boy Advance. Then, Diamond and Pearl, Platinum,
HeartGold and SoulSilver were released for the Game Boy DS. Afterward, X and Y, Omega
Ruby and Alpha Sapphire were released for the Nintendo 3DS. Of course, there were more titles
released every year, side games and side series included, meaning
that no fans of the series had to go without something new for long. New sets were also released for the
card game and were being published by Nintendo instead of Wizards of the Coast. But two years after the Ruby and
Sapphire remakes, a new Pokemon game launched that changed everything. Pokemon GO. GO was a phenomenon in its own
right, and drew players across the world to a game where they could
catch Pokemon in the real world. At its creation, Satoshi had
envisioned Pokemon as a game where its players could experience the
hunt for bugs in the wilderness. Now, they were living it. Within months, Pokemon GO had
built up a user base of over 200 million, and had made $207
million in its first month alone. Players of all ages took to the
outdoors in order to find and catch their favorite Pokemon. People were obsessed. Until they weren’t. As the summer ended, so did Pokemon
GO’s playerbase, dropping to under 50 million by the end of the year. One issue that led to Pokemon GO’s
rapid decline was players being disappointed in a lack of features. At launch, the game had no way to
battle other players except for limited gym battles, and the game’s
developer, Niantic, was slow to add new features and even removed some
popular features from the game. A disastrous Pokemon GO fest the
next year didn’t help anything. Hosted in Chicago, the event was meant
to be a place for Pokemon GO fanatics to meet and catch legendary Pokemon,
but the 20,000 people proved to be too much for the local cell phone networks,
and game server crashes left a sour taste in the mouths of many attendees. The situation grew so poor that the CEO
of Niantic was booed on stage with shouts of “Fix the game!” coming from the crowd. Help me welcome to the stage The C.E.O. of Niantic Mr. John Hanke. Thanks Rachel But Niantic didn’t give up on
their Pokemon title, and over the years drew players back to the
game by adding in much-requested features and hosting new events. While they still haven’t reached the
popularity level they started at, Pokemon GO broke $1 billion in annual revenue
four years after launch — an over 20% increase compared to its first year. Then, just as COVID began forcing
people inside, a new Pokemon phenomena rocked the world. Many who now found themselves spending
their entire days at home began looking for things to do, and turned to Pokemon as
a familiar and fun way to pass the time. Among those who turned to the familiar
old feeling of Pokemon trading cards were livestreamers like Logan Paul, Steve Aoki,
and rapper Logic — who all began buying up boxes of booster packs and opening
them live with hundreds or thousands of followers watching and sharing in
the excitement of getting a rare card. Videos of the streams went on to garner
millions of views, and further excite fans about picking up the trading card game. With the increased demand for Pokemon
cards, prices have increased too. Rare cards, like an original, basic
set Charizard, have skyrocketed in price up from $16,000 to $300,000. The surge in prices has been great news
for card collectors, who are now earning millions off the sales of Pokemon cards,
getting rich practically overnight. Of course, the Pokemon video
games haven’t slowed either. The same year that Pokemon GO took
over smartphones worldwide, Pokemon Sun and Moon released, followed by yearly
releases of Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon; Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee; Sword and
Shield; Expansion packs for Sword and Shield; and remakes of Diamond and Pearl. Since then, the open-world Pokemon
Legends: Arceus released to popular reviews, and a new series of games,
Scarlet and Violet, have been announced. No matter what happens, one thing is
for sure: Pokemon is here to stay. Today, Pokemon is the highest-grossing
franchise of all time — surpassing even Star Wars, Marvel and Mickey Mouse as
it brings in $100 billion in sales. As for Satoshi, he continued to be
heavily involved with the direction of the franchise and is widely known as one
of the top game creators in the world. This is the story of how a
bug-obsessed kid, who spent his highschool days skipping class to
play games in his local arcade, created a game that changed the world. For more interesting stories about
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