Who conceived the original Pokémon franchise before its 1996 video-game debut?

Satoshi Tajiri conceived the original Pokémon franchise before its 1996 video-game debut.

Tajiri grew up in Machida, Tokyo, where he enjoyed collecting insects and exploring natural areas. That childhood interest later helped inspire Pokémon’s central idea: finding, collecting, and observing unusual creatures. He also became fascinated with arcade games and began writing about them as a teenager.

Before Pokémon, Tajiri founded Game Freak. What began as a self-published video-game magazine developed into a game studio, eventually producing the Pokémon concept with Nintendo and Game Freak collaborators. Tajiri served as the original creator, while other artists and developers shaped the creatures, characters, and game world.

A common mix-up is attributing Pokémon’s creation entirely to Nintendo or to designer Ken Sugimori. Nintendo published the games, and Sugimori was crucial to their visual design, but Tajiri is credited with conceiving the franchise. The first games were released in Japan in 1996, beginning a much larger multimedia phenomenon.