Word: monsters
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...Monsters make for disquieting playmates. No matter how toylike and frivolous they may appear, monsters are unnatural and, in the end, deal in unresolved fear. But monsters also have a way with children. Consider the suspicious charms of the Pokemon creatures--Gengar, Cubone and Chansey, for example. The first is a ghostly purple ball with a devilishly cute smile, horns to match and a crocodile spine. The second is a sort of bear cub with a skull over its head--or is the whole thing its actual head? The third is a vaguely dinosauric pinkish cloud. Their equally bizarre compatriots...
...Officially there were only 150 species of Pokemon. Unknown to Nintendo, Tajiri had put a 151st in the software: Mew, a major character in the film. "You had to acquire Mew by interacting," says Tajiri. "Without trading, you can never get Mew." The rumors started flying of a secret monster that only a few people had the key to unlock. More games sold...
...electrical-utility repairman. He refused. No one expected him to go very far, even when he came up with the game after six trying years. But it is Tajiri's obsessions, more dysfunctional than Disneyesque, that are at the core of the Pokemon phenomenon. His monsters are a child's predilections. As the late, controversial child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim wrote, "The monster a child knows best and is most concerned with [is] the monster he feels or fears himself...
...months, he barely had enough money to pay his employees. Five people quit when he told them how dire the financial conditions were. Tajiri didn't pay himself, but lived off his father. Perhaps the tensions were creative. Explaining his goal, Tajiri says, "The important thing was that the monsters had to be small and controllable. They came in a capsule, like a monster within yourself, like fear or anger...
...Pikachu crisis stirred a huge amount of attention and publicity, but the wrong kind. At that time, Tajiri's GameFreak and Kubo's publishing company were negotiating with skeptical executives at Nintendo America about introducing Pokemon to the U.S. CARTOON MONSTER ATTACKS KIDS was the first headline Americans read about Pokemon. It was not a good omen. There were others, however...