In Japan, violence in games is pretty much self-regulated.There's more violence in games in the U.S., in things like Mortal Kombat, where they rip out hearts and cut off heads.

Japanese people wouldn't come up with ideas of blood splattering all over. Japanese focus more on the intricacies of the actions, the motion.

What's more important is that the monsters are controllable by the players.Pikachu is like the name of the species. But each player can name their own Pikachu. So kids can relate to it more. They get more attached to them that way.

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.

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 into Space Invaders in about 1978. It got me more and more interested in video games. There wasn't any media to get information about games, so I came up with Game Freak magazine.

Pikachu. 'Pika' is the sound Japanese say an electric spark makes. And 'chu' is the sound a mouse makes. So Pikachu is like an electric mouse.