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.

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.

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.

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

I was really interested in collecting insects.

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.

When I was 18 I already had a business going.

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.

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

The technology in making games and in making anime is really similar. There are common concepts.

I'm always interested in learning something new.

The public takes from a writer, or a writing, what it needs and lets the remainder go. but what they take is usually what they need least and what they let go is what they need most.

...the role of the military is to fight and win war and, therefore, prevent war from happening in the first place.

I'm a bit of lunatic with shoes and jackets and jeans. It's just how I am.

I played for anybody and everybody from the time I started playing guitar, when I was 10 or 11.

I don't want to just play the same thing. But with The Red Road, no one has ever seen me like that. No one really even knows that I smile, have a personality and have a sense of humor.

I've noticed a surge when I go out somewhere, or if I'm doing stand-up.

I'm not a flamboyant artist.

My childhood was extreme.

I really couldn't say how famous I really am, that's for the history books to decide. But I'll probably be pretty up there.