Satoshi Tajiri created the Pokémon franchise, first launched through Game Freak’s role-playing games.
Tajiri founded Game Freak, which began as a video-game fanzine before becoming a development company. His childhood interest in collecting insects helped inspire Pokémon’s central idea: finding, collecting, and exchanging creatures.
The Game Boy’s Link Cable was especially important to the concept. Tajiri imagined players using the connection not only for competition, but also to trade creatures between cartridges. Nintendo approved the project, and Shigeru Miyamoto later advised the development team.
Ken Sugimori became the principal illustrator and character designer, while Junichi Masuda composed music and worked on programming. Their contributions are sometimes confused with authorship of the franchise, but the creator credit belongs to Tajiri. The first Pokémon games were released in Japan in 1996, after several years of difficult development.