Satoshi Tajiri is Responsible For One of the Most Successful Video Game Franchises in History. He Also has Autism.

If you had to make a list of some of the most successful franchises in the history of video gaming, Pokemon would undoubtedly be right at the top. First released in Japan in 1996 for the handheld Game Boy console, Pokemon soon turned into a legitimate global phenomenon. As of March 2020, games in the franchise have sold more than 1.3 billion copies across the globe. This alone makes it the second most popular franchise in history, behind only Nintendo’s own Super Mario Bros.

The mobile game Pokemon Go quickly became the most downloaded game for smartphones and tablets soon after its release, with over a billion downloads. The Pokemon trading card game has sold over 30 billion cards. The Pokemon anime series was watched by over a billion people in 176 countries. The list goes on and on. The man at the heart of it all is Satoshi Tajiri – someone who was inspired to create a game that mimicked the spirit and enjoyment of his favorite childhood hobby, insect collecting. Without him, absolutely none of this would be possible. Satoshi Tajiri is also a high-functioning autistic.

Satoshi Tajiri: The Story So Far

As a child in Tokyo in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Satoshi Tajiri had two hobbies: collecting bugs and playing arcade games. It was those video games that actually captured so much of his time and attention that he would consistently cut classes – a decision that ultimately forced him to drop out of high school. He eventually took enough make-up classes to get his high school diploma, before going onto the Tokyo National College of Technology to focus on computer science and electronics.

It was also during this time that he started contributing to a fan arcade game magazine called “Game Freak.” He and his fellow writers and artists at the magazine did what fans usually do eventually – they decided that they were unhappy with the current collection of games making their way into home and arcades and decided to make one of their own.

With that, Pokemon was born

Satoshi was personally responsible for illustrating the original 151 Pokemon, though the total number of pocket monsters available for collection has long since ballooned into almost 750 new creatures. 

Not only did Pokemon immediately become a monster hit (no pun intended), but it was actually responsible for helping to turn gaming giant Nintendo around during the 1990s. Although the Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Nintendo brought in massive sales during the late 80s and early 1990s, things had long since taken a downturn for the corporation. The Game Boy was considered to be a “dead console.” The Nintendo 64 hadn’t made nearly the impact it was supposed to, in large part thanks to the sudden influx of new competition like the Sony PlayStation. 

Things simply weren’t looking good for what was once the biggest video game company in history…

… until Pokemon.

The reason why Satoshi’s autism is relevant to this discussion is that people who are on the spectrum tend to take up collecting as a hobby. They fixate on things and his childhood bug collection was perhaps the earliest example of that in his life. 

It’s even likely that this was a major contributing factor to his passion (to put it mildly) for video games in his teens. He didn’t just go to the arcade and play his favorite games every day. He took them apart. He tried to build his own consoles. He was fascinated with how it all worked and how it all fits together. That goes above and beyond the dedication that most people show for even their most passionate hobbies.

It was also autism that led Satoshi to create something entirely new for people to collect. They weren’t catching bugs in jars any longer – they were collecting wonderful, colorful monsters in containers dubbed Poke-balls. Sure, you would then get them to fight against one another, but that’s just the spirit of video games at work.

In the end, Satoshi Tajiri has the type of career that most people can only dream of. Not only did he create one of the most successful franchises in any medium ever, but he continues to be closely involved in all of the new video games released to date. He’s still working just as hard as ever – sometimes putting in shifts of 24 hours or more, all before resting for the next 12 hours.

But had Satoshi Tajiri not been on the spectrum, it’s entirely possible that none of this would happen. The trajectory of Nintendo would certainly look a lot different, and the same is likely true for the childhoods of millions of kids across the world as well.