12 Quotes by Satoshi Tajiri

I was really interested in collecting insects.

Pikachu, ‘pika’ is the sound Japanese say an electric spark makes. And ‘chu’ is the sound a mouse makes. So Pikachu is like an electric mouse.

I sleep 12 hours and then work 24 hours. I’ve worked those irregular hours for the past three years. It’s better to stay up day and night to come up with ideas. I usually get inspiration for game designing by working this schedule.

The more I learned about games, the more frustrated I became because the games weren’t very good. I could tell a good game from a bad game. My conclusion was: let’s make our own games.

When I was 18 I already had a business going.

I was really careful in making monsters faint rather than die. I think that young people playing games have an abnormal concept about dying. They start to lose and say, ‘I’m dying.’ It’s not right for kids to think about a concept of death that way. They need to treat death with more respect.

The technology in making games and in making anime is really similar. There are common concepts.

Japanese people wouldn’t come up with ideas of blood splattering all over. Japanese focus more on the intricacies of the actions, the motion.

You all think you have great ideas or Pokemon games, but if I actually listened to all of you and we combined all of your ideas in a game, it would be an unplayable monstrosity. You want a game with all the regions, but only the first generation Pokemons, yet all the legendary ones and such silly things. Whenever I receive one of these rants, I go to the development floor and read it out loud to all the Game Freak employees in a mocking voice, and we all laugh at you.