The creator of Pokémon is Satoshi Tajiri, a Japanese video game designer. He conceived the idea of Pokémon in the early 1990s, inspired by his childhood hobby of collecting insects. Tajiri wanted to recreate the feeling of bug collecting through a video game, and the concept was further inspired by the ability of Nintendo Game Boys to connect via link cables, allowing players to trade creatures, similar to how bugs might crawl between locations

. Tajiri co-founded the game development company Game Freak, which developed the first Pokémon games, Pokémon Red and Green, released in 1996 for the Nintendo Game Boy. The development took about six years and was financially challenging, but the game became a massive success and launched a multibillion-dollar franchise that includes video games, trading cards, TV shows, movies, and merchandise

. Ken Sugimori, a friend of Tajiri and an illustrator, also played a key role in the visual design of Pokémon, but the original concept and creation of the franchise are credited to Satoshi Tajiri