How Pokémon was created: six years and near bankruptcy

How did Pokémon start?

It started with a magazine, not a game. Satoshi Tajiri grew up playing Space Invaders in arcades and, according to TIME magazine, even took apart a Nintendo console to understand how games were made¹.

In the early 1980s, he created an amateur magazine called Game Freak, with tips and tricks for his and his friends' favorite games¹². The sources disagree on the year: TIME says 1982, Wikipedia says 1983. Artist Ken Sugimori found the magazine in a shop, liked it and joined the group².

On April 26, 1989, the two turned the magazine into a game company with the same name². One of Game Freak's first games was Quinty, an action and puzzle game for the Nintendo console of the time².

Where did the idea for Pokémon come from?

It came from a cable. In 1991, according to TIME, Tajiri discovered the Game Boy, Nintendo's pocket console, and the part that caught his attention most: a cable that linked two devices¹.

He told the magazine he imagined an insect moving back and forth across the cable¹. As a child, Tajiri collected insects. For TIME, Pokémon was a way to give children of another generation the chance to collect creatures the way he did¹.

How do you play the first Pokémon?

The player walks through a world full of wild creatures, the Pokémon. When they find one, they fight in turns: they pick one of up to four moves, use an item, switch creatures or run away³. During the fight, they can throw a Poké Ball to catch the creature; the weaker it is, the easier the catch³.

There are 151 creatures to collect. And this is where the cable from the original idea comes in: each version of the game has creatures that only exist in it, so to complete the collection you have to trade with another person by linking two Game Boys³. Some creatures only change form when they are traded³.

What hooks people, in our reading, is the urge to complete the collection, and the fact that it cannot be completed alone: you have to play with another person.

How long did it take, and who made it?

Six years, according to TIME¹. The first games, Pocket Monsters Red and Green, came out in Japan on February 27, 1996; the work had been finished in October 1995³.

It was not one person alone. Game Freak was a small company, and the designs of the 151 creatures were handled by a team of fewer than ten people, led by Ken Sugimori³. Tajiri also had outside help: Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, became a kind of mentor to him during the work, according to TIME¹.

And Tajiri already worked with games. TIME says Nintendo signed the contract impressed by the games he had already made¹.

Did Game Freak almost go bankrupt because of Pokémon?

Almost. According to TIME, during the six years of work the company almost went broke¹. Five people quit when Tajiri told them how dire the finances were¹. He did not pay himself and lived off his father's help¹.

Not even Nintendo was betting much on it. TIME says the company released the game without expecting much from it¹. Miyamoto told the magazine that, at first, Pokémon was just an idea, and nothing happened¹.

What came next?

In numbers, this is what came next:

The last number comes from the company itself and counts units shipped to stores, adding up every game in the series⁴.

The other side

Pokémon is a survivor. Many small companies bet everything on one game and closed before launching, and nobody tells their stories. Six years without a salary, supported by your father, is not a plan anyone should follow. And Tajiri did not start from zero: he already made games and had a company, a team and a contract with Nintendo.

And what does this have to do with making games with AI?

Pokémon was not made with AI. It was made by a team, over six years, at a time when making a game required people to program, people to draw and money to pay everyone.

What has changed since then is who does part of that work. Today, someone who does not program can hand the writing of the code to AI, and it also helps with art and sound. That does not shorten the road to a hit, and nobody guarantees it does. What it changes is what stays with you: the part that was Tajiri's, knowing what the game is and why someone would play it (our reading). See what AI does and what stays with you.

His idea came from something he loved as a child and from a detail nobody had looked at closely, a cable. Other beginnings like this are in famous games that started small, and a case of someone who started much later is in the story of Masako Wakamiya.