Tajire

A tale of perseverance can come from unlikely places and from unlikely people. Most do not think about the struggles faced when creating a game, and most do not realize how much hard work goes into the series that they know and love. This instance comes from the Pokemon franchise and its global takeover. To understand the situation, one must first take a look at the man behind it all: Satoshi Tajiri. Born in 1965, Tajiri grew up in the Tokyo suburb of Machida. He drew his inspiration from his childhood, using his interests and home as a basis for what would eventually become a well-known game. He collected bugs and explored as a child, spent countless hours at arcades, and nearly failed high school in the process. Although this seems like an easy enough start to a famous …show more content…
Tajiri had been working with programming for a few years after taking apart one of Nintendo’s consoles and winning a Sega sponsored contest (Larimer, 1999). From there, he worked with Nintendo on various projects before pitching his idea for Pokemon, formerly Capsule Monsters. It was during the development period for this game that the next problem sets in. The game itself took six years for completion. Along the way, they lost five members of Game Freak, and their funding began to wane. Bankruptcy crept up on them, and Tajiri could barely afford to pay his employees. To fix this, Tajiri decided to not pay himself, and he lived off of what his father could give him (Chua-Eaon, Larimer, McLaughlin, Sakamaki, Tashiro, 1999). This act of putting the company before himself is the next lesson in perseverance. Making a video game is never easy, and money will be tight if the project drags on. Despite this, there is always a way to push through and reach the goal. In Tajiri’s case, they managed to get more funding