>>58360069He was hands-on during the planning and development phase of the Detective Pikachu film. With it being developed by an outside studio, rather than an established partner like ShoPro, he helped guide production to make sure the world felt authentic.
I think his role with the games is similar. He's not involved with game systems or characters, but he gives input during the project planning and pitch phase. 'What's the setting, how does that connect to the theme, and how does that influence the player.' The most well known example is the brail puzzles, that was Tajiri's idea to help connect people and build on the game's theme of communication/understanding.
Pokemon makes great effort to simplify and obfuscate the development side of things. They're often hush hush about who designed Pokemon, they won't say who determines Shiny colours. There's apparently one person who writes the Pokedex entries and manages the ecology/interactions of different species, but they won't say who. They withhold story elements that were established before release just for the sake of mystery. And in the case of the brail puzzle, Masuda has told a simplified version of the story where he came up with the idea and implemented it. Just glossing over it being Tajiri's concept, despite Tajiri having recounted it years prior. We know from the Gold beta that Tajiri's version of the game had honey instead of headbutt. This is the same system later used in Diamond and Pearl, and is the reason Teddiursa and Heracross have an affinity for honey. In the lead up to DP, Honey was discussed frequently by the devs and press, and at no point was it attributed to Tajiri.
There are likely lots of elements in the modern games that came from Tajiri, and we just never hear about it, because it would distract from the product and marketing.
