Who created the Pokémon franchise and proposed its original game concept to Nintendo?

Satoshi Tajiri created the Pokémon franchise and proposed its original game concept to Nintendo.

Tajiri grew up enjoying insect collecting, a hobby that helped inspire Pokémon’s central idea of finding and collecting creatures. He imagined a Game Boy experience in which players could discover monsters and exchange them through the system’s Link Cable.

Tajiri pitched the concept to Nintendo in 1990. Development took several years, and the project changed names before becoming Pocket Monsters. Shigeru Miyamoto supported the idea at Nintendo, but he was not the creator of the franchise.

Ken Sugimori was crucial to the visual design of the Pokémon, while Junichi Masuda worked on programming and music and later became a major series director. Those roles are often mixed together when people recall Pokémon’s origins.