wfmag.cc \ 51THE PATH TO POKÉMON
Tajiri’s regular coverage of Namco’s coin-
ops also explains why, when the budding
game designer went to the company
with his first game – what would become
1989’s Mendel Palace, also known as
Quinty – they agreed to publish it rather
than immediately march him off the
premises. Admittedly, Mendel Palace,
with its fixed-screen action where the
player knocks out enemies by flipping
over gigantic tiles on the ground, felt of
a piece with the other games Namco
was putting out at the time, and it was
an early hint of Game Freak’s talent for
presenting a simple concept with charm
and character – thanks in no small part
to Sugimori’s spiky, distinctive artwork,
which was already in evidence at this
early stage.
Game Freak’s success with Mendel
Palace led them to make games for other
major Japanese firms, and their output
was varied, but invariably cute and
action-oriented: for Sony, they created
the squishy
platformer Smart
Ball (known in
Japan as Jerry Boy);
for Nintendo, they
made the block-
matching puzzler
Yoshi and the sorely overlooked SNES
title Mario & Wario (one of the only Mario
games never to be released in the West).
Pulseman was perhaps Game Freak’s
finest pre-Pokémon title: a Mega Man-like
platformer injected with an electric jolt
of colour and speed.
In an alternate timeline, Game Freak
might have carried on making games
in the same vein – the odd licensed
game here, a more personal, original
title there – much like another medium-
sized Japanese studio of note, Treasure.
But even back in the late eighties, as
he was finishing up on Mendel Palace,
Tajiri was already thinking about making
an RPG. In a 2004 interview with Game
Center CX, Tajiri said the idea for Pokémon
was born from his frustration while
playing Dragon Quest II – there was an
item that he desperately needed, while
his friend and collaborator Sugimori had
two of them; but because there was no
way of sharing items between cartridges
on the NES, he’d simply have to grind
away at the game for hours until he
found the item himself. When the Game
Boy emerged, with its ability to exchange
data between devices via its Link Cable,
he started thinking about an adventure
where players could share items with
each other.
From that seed of finding items and
sharing them with friends – and Tajiri’s
childhood hobby of catching insects- the idea for
Pokémon was born.
After a protracted
development
of six years, the
launch of Pokémon
Red and Blue in
1996 was an immediate smash, with
its cocktail of light fantasy role-playing,
combat, catching, training, and sharing
turning the two cartridges into the Game
Boy’s biggest-selling property.
With Pokémon spawning successive
generations of sequels, spin-offs,
a hit trading card game, and more
besides, you might think that Game
Freak would descend into a creative
semi-retirement. Far from it – as the
boxout on the right and the wealth of
memorable titles overleaf prove, the
spirit of a small, artistically hungry studio
still exists somewhere beneath the
Pokémon juggernaut.
Game Freak’s other title in
the works is something called
Tow n, a turn-based strategy
game for the Switch. Even before he entered the industry, Tajiri
showed a knack for making games: as a
teen, he taught himself programming and
won a design award from Sega.“Game Freak already
had a fascinating history
before it even began
work on Pokémon”Game Gear
Around 2012 – between Pokémon
generations Black and White and X and Y –
Game Freak began thinking about ways to
generate new game ideas outside its pocket
monster universe. The result was Gear
Project – an initiative that resulted in such
download-only curios as HarmoKnight and
Giga Wrecker Alt. According to Giga Wrecker
Alt. programmer and director Masayuki
Onoue, any employee can suggest an idea
for a game – which certainly explains
how the firm can come up with titles as
wonderfully varied as the chaotic Tembo
The Badass Elephant, or the impossibly cute
3DS title, Pocket Card Jockey.
“The Gear Project program was launched
with the intention to seek and propose new
titles that could potentially support the
company in the future,” Onoue recently told
us. “There are no restrictions in terms of
type of game, small or big, or the choice of
platform to work on.”Interface
Game Freak \^ Developer Profile Some may scoff at Pokémon, but it’s
popular for a reason: its light role-playing is
approachable, its monsters a joy to collect.