I'm very careful about violence in games. I'm not interested in creating violent effects.

I was really careful in making monsters faint rather than die. I think that young people playing games have an abnormal concept about dying. They start to lose and say, ‘I’m dying.’ It’s not right for kids to think about a concept of death that way. They need to treat death with more respect.

When I was 18 I already had a business going.

I had a cat, though. I wanted to name the frogs, because I watched them grow, but there were too many.

Pokémon was made with Miyamoto-san's advice. Since I was a teenager, playing Donkey Kong, he's always been my role model. He's a mentor for my heart.

I was really interested in collecting insects.

The more I learned about games, the more frustrated I became because the games weren't very good. I could tell a good game from a bad game. My conclusion was: let's make our own games.