Today, August 28th, 2010, Satoshi Tijiri celebrates his 45th birthday. Tijiri founded the development house, Game Freak, in 1989, which went on to create the Pokemon series. As a tribute to the man's accomplishments, the guys at Albotas have put together a few interesting facts that you may or may not have known about the Pokemon creator.

• At 16, he won a game design contest sponsored by Nintendo's then rival, Sega
• At 17, he started a do-it-yourself arcade gaming mag called "Game Freak", which would eventually grow into the game development company that created Pokemon
• Tajiri has been diagnosed of Asperger Syndrome
• Pokemon was inspired by Tajiri's hobby of collecting bugs. At one time, he saw a bug crawling across the link cable of two kids playing GameBoy, so that's where the idea stemmed from.
• His favorite Pokemon is Poliwhirl
• When the original Pokemon was in development, Tajiri was mentored by the great Shigeru Miyamoto, who he already admired before then. For that reason, the Japanese release had Ash named as "Satoshi", and Gary as "Shigeru"
• Game Freak nearly went bankrupt while developing Pokemon Red and Green (Red and Blue in the US). Five employees quit and they were barely able to pay the remaining staff. Tajiri did not take any salary during that time and was supported by his father.

[via Albotas]

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