It seems like such a small detail but the teacher who blocked out time for him to share his findings changed his life for sure. It seems insignificant but its so important when mentor figures nurture passion. That just stood out to me so much
i still remember being in 1st grade and my hippie 20 yr old teacher inviting me up 2 teach the class when i caught her on some simple mistake, and then i did the same when 1 of the other kids caught a mistake i made she also gave me extra points on a spelling test bc i drew the letters in the style of the word, like spikes coming out of the word spiky n shit like that shit sticks in my head 2 this day, what a dope fuckin learning experience she fostered
“So much so that one of his teachers blocked out time for him to present his findings to the class” That is so wholesome. Imagine having a student so passionate about something that you willingly give them the floor to share what they found.
True. But his reaction was to create something that became a gift for all mankind. It's a lesson for all of us. When things we don't like happen, don't get upset, get creative.
If you talk to him when your gameplay time is exactly at 4:20 he will begin to go down on your character and then the screen goes black and all of your pokemon are healed.
Most all of them were very eager pioneers, who just really liked something and wanted to make it better, at a time when the tech was very new and no one else was doing a ton with it. It's incredible to hear stories like this.
@Seven Vile Eyes It's sad because whenever someone is gaining a lot of attention in media, like when a persons name is trending on Twitter or DYKG features them, it's usually because the person in question either did something very controversial/stupid or they flat-out died. And we've had a lot of that happening lately.
I think they learned that with Mr. Iwata. A few months after his passing, you could see equally passionate videos about Miyamoto, Eiji Aonuma, Sakurai and now Tajiri.
Tajiri's story is such an inspiration for me. In the 90's, Pokèmon was basically my religion, and sparked my interest in art because I loved drawing all of Ken Sugimori's creatures. Unfortunately instead of allowing me to share my drawings with my classmates, my teachers would confiscate them, and every adult would tell me how much I'm wasting my time and mind on video games. Today I have an art degree and am working on a big indie game that I hope will inspire others the way Tajiri's own passion project has inspired me.
@@PloopChute It's still being worked on, unfortunately 🤣 Progress is slow because of work, life and other projects & commitments, but I refuse to give up on it. I plan on posting Devlog videos about it once I get back to working on it full time though, which will hopefully be soon 😊 Thanks for the interest!
@Alfredo I'm gonna sub to your channel so if you finish it and post about it, I find out and can check it out! Hope to play it eventually! Good luck with the project!
Okay I think it can be agreed that Mr. Tajiri has had incredible self motivation all his life and it truly shows what can happen with true determination and passion. But I'm so blown away by the Game Freak magazine. He drew everything and wrote everything himself. As a teenager. And thusly managed to sell in stores. Like, the amount of drive this man had even in the years most of us have next to none is so moving and inspiring. Would love if anyone knows of a good documentary about Mr. Tajiri.
It's another reminder that one of the world's most beloved franchises is lucky to have been created at all. Sure, many newer fans wouldn't know all this stuff and how close pokémon was to never getting made or being a success but when you hear it all through the lives of the devs you know everything they make in the franchise is very personal to them and regardless of what fans think at times, are made with alot of love and passion. We're super lucky they even made more than two generations as many games don't even get that far! ❤️
@@justice7788 i don't think so. What is happening is that for one, pokémon is primarily a kid game and adults who grew up with it expect more out of their gaming experiences than what they offer. Also, many people play pokemon for different reasons (like the sims community) and no matter what way you slide your game making decisions you can't please anyone and trying to make a middle ground always ends up pleasing no one. Pokémon is a slower franchise to implement change and for a good reason, not for bad ones. Atm pokémon is trying to edge itself off its railroad experiences however they haven't yet worked out how to weave a story around that more open concept so we've ended up with a strange mash of the two, but after playing it it's pretty clear they've been trying something they are not entirely home with creating yet. Other franchises go through this weird period (Zelda and Mario certainly have and have some strange experiments in some but ultimately those built up into to amazing experiences that we now have) and pokémon has had some brilliant ones over the years, but now they're in need to start fiddling around again to find what will work on the switch for them. It won't make everyone happy, however they have still ultimately poured love into every inch of what they have given us, even if they themselves are still finding their feet. For a first attempt at something the franchise has never done before (a little bit of open world and more multiplayer focus) they have done reasonably alright and its a step in an interesting direction which I hope they continue with and improve on. One day we'll get that open pokémon world, we've just got to let them figure out how to go about it. Other companies have at least had practice to some degree before jumping into it and pokémon should be no different.
@@meikahidenori I didn't read much of your comment, because i don't care enough to. But I'm playing Sword right now and it doesn't feel good and I've been supporting the game this whole time but it's sadly really not that fun. I'm sure it's making money though
@@justice7788 and that's fine. All I did was explain why you're probably not enjoying it. All bandwagon hating aside, truth is pokémon is in a transition period and in a state where trying to make everyone happy, they've made no one happy. While it doesn't scratch my own expectations, I can see what they were trying to do and would like them to keep trying. New players and younger ones will still love it and that won't change (my 4 yr old loves it to peices and that makes me happy as it was her birthday present)
I'm not sure what that emoji is because i'm commenting from a PS4 and I see a rectangle with a cross going through it but I don't think need have to know, thank you for replying! \(^v^)/
I will never get tired of hearing Satoshi Tajiri's story. How catching small bugs and playing outside impacted his life, nature has its way of inspirong everyone
Nightling Bosconovitch 0:00 Pallet Town 0:37 Professor Oak's Lab 1:36 Violet City 3:50 Route 24 5:25 Ecruteak City 7:45 ??? 8:21 Gym 10:24 ??? 11:45 Azalea Town 13:27 Pokemon Main Theme 15:15 Goldenrod City 16:57 National Park
You can thank the future co-director and director of 2nd gen and 3rd generation for that respectively. Mayuda was the composer originally. His thing was music.
15:47 "The game became so popular that many schools had to ban the trading cards" I remember when they were banned at my school. Some people brought bootleg trading cards and sold them for money. That was the straw. XD Must've been be 98-99 or something.
In my school they used as an motivation to learn. If a student solve some math problem in front of the class the teacher would give a Pokémon sticker. She bought an entire collection of stickers and all my class got better at Math just to collect it.
@@Weareonenation303 Yep, same here. My school was just as rife with it as any other American school at first and I still look back on that time with great fondness. For a time there wasn't a single lunch that went by without at least two guys battling or trading on their GameBoy Colors off by themselves and a whole crowd of people watching two kids play the card game at a different table. My school was hyper Christian and conservative, and it eventually came out that, *gasp*, some of the designs were based on a variety of real world mythologies. The parents flipped their shit and the school reacted accordingly. From what I understand, though, it made its way back as my youngest brother and his friends would bring their 3DSs and their copies of Diamond/Pearl to play at lunch. :)
I went to a Christian school and they completely banned anything Pokemon. I brought in a magazine article on the infamous seizure episode to show my friend, and they confiscated it. I created my own fakemon cards on lineless note cards, and even made a little carrying/storage case out of notebook paper to hang on my desk with tape. They never took those away. I kept my Pokemon obsession at home only, collecting cards, manga, guides, toys and coloring books, wishing I could show them to my classmates. Eventually, I learned about other anime and was able to share my collections and ideas with others at last!
Man, this is really good! Satoshi's story is even more inspirational than I had imagined! Those character illustrations on the magazine covers/early game concept art are clearly where the NPC trainers' designs came from too.
12:51 "Tajiri also insisted the monsters faint after losing a battle instead of dying, because he thought there was already enough violence in the world and didn't want kids to associate losing a game with death" *Nuzlock Challenges: "ALLOW US TO INTRODUCE OURSELVES"*
Yeah, I loved Red/Blue and Gold/Silver, but I could not STAND Ruby/Sapphire. Everything felt completely different, it didn't have the same soul anymore. It killed my interest in Pokemon. It wasn't until years later that I discovered that this was why.
@@L33PL4Y ummmm ur drunk and stupid, what about Pokémon black and white 2 , platinum , and hg/ss those were excellent games and hg/ss is a better game than gold and silver since it was an enhancement of the game
I only knew the general story about him for years, and I haven't looked through the manga yet. Hearing the full details makes me respect this man much more especially for how much Pokemon has been a part of my life.
Tajiri is unlike many "superstar" game developers Meanwhile: *Kojima Productions will start making movies* Jokes aside, it's amazing how both Tajiri and Kojima stayed with their childhood passions and never gave them up. Big respect
Shin Megami Tensei was a huge influence on the final version of Pokémon. This has been documented at length in the past. While Pokémon was in development someone in the team played SMT. It fit so well with what they were trying to make that they just copied large chunks of the gameplay. It’s funny, since Persona 4, P4G, Persona 5, and SMT 4 have blown up in global popularity, it’s hard to find the interviews that used to have these old quotes. I think there Nintendo/Gamefreak has done a through Internet legal scrub to avoid having to pay out the massive amount of money that they owe Atlus.
I'm actually really shocked I've never heard of this guy but now I know why I haven't. He is a much more private man. But wow it's amazing how much of an impact you made without having to be too far into the public eye. That would be a dream!
the part that talks about how he was looking for a verb & the whole cooperating & trading part after & based on his early life in nature was just beautiful how brilliantly did he develop these simple concepts
When I saw the title i thought "oh this will be a boring compendium of their life". But instead, his story was fascinating and I enjoyed the entire video. What an amazing guy and team.
This game and its development is so interesting to me. Enough to where it deserves it’s own full fledged Documentary that then explores the insane craze that Pokémon was for the late 90s. Getting Pokémon Red when I was 8 is such an impressionable moment for me, I recently got to play the Switch remake with my kid and it having the 2 player option is just such a full circle moment. A part of me though kept thinking we were cheating, we should be starting off with GBC Red, exploring the glitches, the cheats…playing it vanilla, wondering if I can pass that forever passion and moment on to my son. The irony is it didn’t, instead Minecraft became that thing for him, but I get to play with him while I know that wonder and passion is there it’s just a different game..maybe one day we can play Pokémon Red in Minecraft and can meet in the middle
My first was yellow along with my dandelion yellow Gameboy color 20 years ago. I couldn't put the game down, wish I knew where my old cartridge is but it's been a long time
My first is heart gold. I'm not really good at games but this cemented my love for both pokemon and nintendo. Despite being burnt out by the poke controversy about sword and sheld.
This made me cry. No lie. The music and the wholesome origin story. What a legend. So many good memories being there from the beginning for the UK release anyway! Wish I could go back and relive the excitement all over again. Nothing has compared to pokémon hype fad wise.
So much effort and so much passion into a project to finally see it turn into such a big franchise, i have a lot of respect for Satoshi Tajiri and how he battled all the way through without giving up on his goal. Cant help but to also feel sad from the vid seeing how GameFreak is nowadays and in combo with the second gen soundtrack it made me shed a tear, could be that GF doesnt know how to handle/what to do with the new games or the yearly releases(could be a combo of both) but i guess one can only wait to see what happens,havent purchased a pokemon game since Soul Silver and from what i have seen from the new games its gonna be even more time for me to buy one again.
The "humble beginnings" stories are always so good to listen to. To think that for most of us it started being the new early morning cartoon you'd watch before going to school when it actually started like this.
I presented a speech for one of my college classes during highschool about pokemon and this was before pokemon go boomed. It was in the beginning of the year and I was explaining how pokemon because the phenomenon it was at the time and still today. A lot of it focused on tajiri and im glad people recognize him on the level of others
hey, if anyone that runs the DYKG channel sees this, this video isnt in the "Developer Videos" playlist, and neither is the Ken Sugimori video. just thought id let you know.
So thats the reason for the existence of Genwunners and Gentwoers. They were both directed by Satoshi Tajiri. After that it was never the same. When he wasn’t directing anymore.
I think it's a good thing Tajiri decided to stay out of the public eye given the controversy surrounding the series, the national dex crowd will pretty much attack anyone involved with the series, even when they had nothing to do with Sword and Shield, they even attacked the game's producer (Masuda's job only focuses on pre and post production, so if you're blaming him for the dex cut, you're barking up the wrong tree)
@@Wiiguy1606 really every single complaint would be OK if it weren't for 2 thing First is game freak has to make yearly games they don't have the resources to make better games, hell even cod is made by 3 different developers Second game freak has only like 150 employees, that's just crazy when you realize some companies have 800+ and all their games sell less than 1 Pokemon games, sometimes even all their games combined
The difference between the first game and games today really shows. Tajiri treated it like his own child, building the game for so long and the world reacted accordingly. Now they churn something out every 12 months from the leftovers of the previlus game.
@@Sullytaan yeah, before they aimed for a worldwide November release every year (with 2 from ORAS and SM) starting with XY, their release schedule was at least a year and a half between each game, and that included the sister games along with the remakes. From my remembrance, sword and shield had a 2 year development with not all of gamefreak working on it. Honestly, I prefer Valve's "work on what you want, release when you want" policy over yearly releases. I'd rather have no games be released and know they are polished (even if they suck, like artifact) than have unsustainable yearly releases.
@@sokoTV2 Except that Valve can allow themselves to work on their games for so long because Steam brings them a load of money on the table. If Steam wasn't so profitable, Valve would've either developed yearly game releases to stay afloat or completely focused on Steam and neglecting their franchises.
@@quasar4780 Does gamefreak not pull any money from merchandise, the card game, and the anime? Or is that all just creatures inc.? Also, even without steam, valve was really bad about releasing games. Half Life 1 only came out when it did because of Sierra, other than that they've either just outsourced work to other companies, been contractually obligated to release at a certain time, or released on their own time. So while I see where the thought that if they didn't have steam and loot boxes, they'd release games, comes from. I still get the feeling that valve would have run themselves bankrupt because of Gabe's tenacity to hold on to his work model. But it's hard to tell what exactly would make them start finishing games again because of the chaotic nature of the company.
This is really inspiring. Just goes to show that every successful business person goes through hard times but never lose sight of their passion. While these kind of successes are a rare sight, it's still a great way to stop and think about what we're doing with our lives.
I often wonder why Santoshi tajiri is so underappreciated despite coming from such big franchise he didn't gets the same love as shigero mymamoto get for making Zelda and mario I was 8 year old when I first learned about him since than I want to meet him sure you could say that's because he barely appeared in any sort of media but we as a fan should've given him recognition he deserves
I don't know if this is the right video to discuss this, but stop me if you've heard this theory on why Ash never ages in the anime. "Ash Ketchum" is really the 10 year-old Satoshi Tajiri, reimagined as a traveler in a fantastic world. Every season of the anime is therefore a peek into Tajiri's childhood memories as he saw them way back when. The nature areas in the games are reflections of those Tajiri loved to explore. The other characters, of people Tajiri met throughout his life, even some girls he may or may not have fallen in and out of love with. And the Pokemon themselves...yeah, you can probably guess. The final clinching proof to this theory is, of course, Ash's Japanese name, Satoshi, along with Tajiri's openly admitting, "Basically, he's me when I was a kid."
Pokemon was after my time. I must have been in my 20's in college when I first heard about it. I was into the DOOM craze by then. So I don't have any nostalgia with it. However, I do respect the franchise. I respect it more learning from this video. I might have to check out some of the older games in emulation (I'm a retro kind of guy). I'm happy for Satoshi Tajiri. He had an idea based on something he loved and his own nostalgia, and shared it with the world with great success. Good for him. Thanks for contributing to society.
If you're looking for a good retro Pokémon game, play the Second generation (Gold, Silver and Crystal). While the original games were great and very creative and innovative in terms of ideas, gameplay-wise they are very unbalanced. On the other hand, Gold and Silver have a much more balanced gameplay and better aesthetics while still keeping the retro feel and true to the original games. There's a reason why for many, GS is considered the best entry in the series, or at least the best from the early period.
@@Hetsu.. I know. HGSS is one of my most beloved Pokémon experiences, but Aftersun was talking about playing the older games for the retro feel, and doing it in respect to Tajiri, who didn't take part in the remakes. That's why I suggested the original GS over HGSS.
Tajiri was in a slump after he had made a smash hit of the Jerry Boy (Smart Ball in US). He became confused about what and how to make such a great joy of playing like Mario or Xevious had been done. One day, he suddenly thought about what did he himself have fun in his childhood, and he cast his mind back to the days following and catching insects or small animals in his hometown. This gemlike memory is the very source of this worldwide phenomenon. It's so dramatic.
I love Satoshi So much. Pokémon is my life, I’ve loved it since I was 5 and I still love it today at 25. Not a year goes by where I don’t rebeat a random generation. Last year I beat Ultra Sun, Y, Omega Ruby and the original Silver.
Glad he found his way to Miyamoto! Both of them share a passion for video games and both wanted to make them out of their cherished childhood memories exploring nature. They are very much alike. If it wasn't for that I doubt Tajiri would've gotten the great support he did.
Thank you for this video. There’s so little information on the man despite the vast success of his creations. It was great to get to know this person better.
Guys I love your videos but maybe the music on this video was too loud? I had a hard time trying to hear what Furst was saying :( I love the games music but maybe it was a biiiit too much? Cheers!
tajiri NEEDS to come back for the more relevant roles! the games really lack the flair from back then. it was mainly about collecting, exploring the world, YOUR adventure. alola had lillies family drama and narrow hallway routes...
I´ve been play Pokémon for over 20 years, grow up with blue and red version and still playing nowadays. In a couple of days gonna buy my Switch along with Pokémon Sword game and maybe Mario Odyssey as well. God bless Satoshi and his whole family for this beautiful and astonishing contribuition to the world that is Pokémon ^^
Thank you for this video directly. It is a such a well spoken and kind thank you. To a man who has made quite a substantial amount of us happy throughout our lives 🙏🏼. Thank you Satoshi
I don't think it's ever been confirmed that he has it, just widely speculated based off his personality traits. He very well could be autistic, but he's never disclosed it. Japanese culture also consider disabilities taboo which is probably another reason why he's never confirmed anything and why he's a very private person.
