Which video game designer is credited with creating the Pokémon franchise?

Satoshi Tajiri is credited with creating the Pokémon franchise.

Tajiri was a Japanese video game designer who co-founded Game Freak with illustrator Ken Sugimori. His childhood interest in collecting insects helped inspire the idea of collecting creatures, while seeing the Game Boy and its link cable suggested a way for players to exchange them.

Tajiri first conceived the Pokémon concept in 1990. He pitched the project to Nintendo, and development of Pokémon Red and Green eventually took six years. Shigeru Miyamoto mentored Tajiri during development, but Miyamoto was not the creator of Pokémon.

Ken Sugimori played a major role as the first games’ art director and illustrator, and Junichi Masuda later became one of the franchise’s most important composers, programmers, and directors. Those contributions can make their names easy to confuse with Tajiri’s, but the creator credit belongs to Satoshi Tajiri.