>During the six years it took Tajiri to finish Pokemon, GameFreak nearly went broke. For several 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."

>However, by the time Tajiri was done with Pokemon in 1996, Game Boy technology was yesterday's news. "No magazine or TV show was interested. They thought Game Boy was finished," says Masakazu Kubo, executive producer of the publishing company Shogakukan Inc. "No toymakers were interested either." Spiffier graphics and more intricate games were going to be available on CD-ROM for use on home computers, leaving the tiny images on Game Boy in the dust. "When I finished Pokemon," says Tajiri, "I thought Nintendo would reject it. I was like a baseball player sliding into second base knowing he's going to be out. But somehow, I was safe."

No matter what you think of Gen 1 today, fact remains that the games were not primarily made to make profit. Tajiri was a man with passion and a vision, and he went through development hell to see it brought to life, profit be damned. If only every Pokémon game (well, every video game for that matter) could be made with this kind of philosophy.

That's what we've been lacking since X and Y. With the advent of the 3DS the games don't feel like passion projects anymore as much as a corporation cashing in on their brand with minimum effort.