 Years ago, on the far away island of Kyushu in Japan, a little boy sat on a beach. Junichi Masuda came on holiday many times to the peaceful shores of this island, spending time with relatives who lived there. There were many mountains to explore, and the seas and rivers were cool and very clean. Junichi would dive into the sea and catch fish with spears, collect shellfish and crabs, and go fishing with rods or with a net. He would go to the river to catch crabs and shrimps, catch sleeping fish in the river with his hands at night, and go hunting for beetles. He didn't know it yet, but these memories of going out to explore the world, to catch wild things, would go on to define his life. The memories he made here would one day be shared with the world. This is the story of Junichi Masuda, and of two decades of Pokemon games, culminating in Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee, the tale of a little boy who became an accomplished musician, before bringing joy to generations of children. As a teenager, Junichi Masuda's great love was music. He played the trombone in the school brass band, although this did little to kindle his love of classical music. Then, one day, he discovered Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and The Firebird. He was hooked. He began collecting music from all the great composers, and reading their biographies, learning everything he could about them. He dreamed of what their lives must have been like. He only hoped that one day, his attempts at music could be considered this important. But classical compositions were only one element of Junichi's passion for music. He loved Slipknot and Lincoln Park, Underground and the Prodigy. He'd listened to whatever he could find from all around the world, and he saw merit in so many different genres. Yet, in spite of this, Junichi doubted that he could ever have a meaningful career as a musician. Instead, he studied computer graphics and programming at Japan Electronics College. This developing field would surely be a better place to find a lucrative profession. Imagine Junichi's surprise then, when he was hired not just for his programming skills, but also for his musical abilities. A small, fledgling studio, Game Freak, was in need of a composer. Junichi was hired with the understanding that his skill set would be useful in many ways. But first and foremost, he needed to create chiptune music for the studio's very first game, Quinty, also known as Mendel Palace. Junichi leapt at the chance, and very soon cemented himself as an important member of Game Freak's development team. Following Junichi's work on Mario and Yoshi, also known as Yoshi's Egg or simply Yoshi, the head of Game Freak, Satoshi Tajiri, decided to dust off an older game idea that had been put on hiatus. Pokemon Red and Green had been Satoshi's passion project for years, but it was ambitious, and the company simply didn't have the funding to complete his vision. But with the success of their latest game, they had enough money to finish the project. Junichi had a big role in making Pokemon Red and Green shine. While he did help with programming, his main responsibility was creating the sounds for the game, both the music and the sound effects, including the cries of all 150 Pokemon that were present in the game during development. When composing music, he needed to be in the right frame of mind. He'd isolate himself from everyone, as if he was with others, he'd end up getting distracted by chatting. It needed to be quiet. In a peaceful environment, Junichi could hum to himself as he came up with melodies. A more versatile musician might play notes on the piano, but Junichi preferred to keep things in his head, coming up with the melody first, followed by the drums and the bass. Oftentimes, he'd end up with the entire song composed solely in his head, carrying it around for a day or so to finesse it, before actually committing any of it to the computer. Perhaps this was because his memory was more reliable than the old computer equipment that Game Freak used while making their first Pokemon games. The machines were unreliable to say the least, and it wasn't uncommon for them to crash, deleting days worth of work in a single instant. Sometimes, the computers would break so spectacularly that they couldn't be used at all. Junichi would spend hours frustratedly trying to fix the machine so that he could salvage his work. By the end of the development on Pokemon Red and Green, Junichi had burned through three or four computers. But all of this hard work had paid off when, finally, the games became an incredible pop culture sensation. Children around the world were falling in love with Pokemon, embracing this little game that had been made by a handful of earnest game developers. Junichi was astounded to see just how far his work travelled as the entire planet gave in to Pokemonia. Junichi's favourite Pokemon was Psyduck. He liked ducks. He thought they were cool. He even had a picture of Psyduck printed on his business card so that everyone could very clearly tell what he did for a living. As the Pokemon boom continued to grip an entire generation of gamers, Junichi and his colleagues worked hard to complete a follow up title. Pokemon Gold and Silver were designed as an attempt to perfect the shortcomings of the original games, adding in even more creatures to be captured and fixing a lot of the gameplay problems and bugs that had held back the original titles. Satoshi Tajiri, who had directed the original Pokemon games, returned to direct Gold and Silver. But this time, he didn't work alone. Junichi was given the role of sub director, helping Satoshi with decisions and doing far more of the creative heavy lifting than he'd done before. Junichi still created the music for the games, attempting to one up his own musical creations from the first Pokemon titles. Some music was composed on an Amiga computer before converting them to midi data so that they could be imported into the Game Boy. Other tracks would be composed directly onto the Game Boy, a decision that made archiving and recreating the music very difficult years later. Gold and Silver were initially intended as the culmination of the Pokemon series, and it was expected that, after this, Game Freak would move on to something else. But these titles, yet again, went on to phenomenal critical acclaim and commercial success. It wasn't long before Game Freak began considering what to do next. But Satoshi Tajiri was finished with his story. He'd created the Pokemon games that he'd wanted to make, and he felt that it was best for him to hand the reins over to someone else. The torch was passed. Having already been involved in a directorial capacity on Gold and Silver, Junichi was the ideal choice to help lead the Pokemon series going forward. Now, Junichi had an unexpected opportunity. He was free to make whatever Pokemon game he wanted, focusing on whatever he felt was best. The big question was what exactly did Junichi Masuda want to make? As he pondered the opportunity that lay before him, Junichi decided that his own unique spin on the Pokemon world needed to come from the same place of childhood wonder as the original games. Pokemon Red and Green had been inspired by Satoshi Tajiri's memories of catching bugs when he was younger. So what similar memories could Junichi bring to the game? As he thought, Junichi remembered his time in Kyushu. He remembered hiking up tall mountains and relaxing by rivers and on sandy beaches. Junichi remembered hunting for fish and crabs and exploring the wonders of the ocean and a hidden undersea world. Yes, this would do. If Pokemon Red and Green had been a reflection of Satoshi Tajiri's adventures in rural Tokyo, then Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire would similarly pay tribute to Junichi's more oceanic adventures upon a small island. Ruby and Sapphire's version of Kyushu would be a little different. He turned the island on its side to create the basis for the game's world map, in the hopes that even those who were familiar with the geography wouldn't recognise too much of the island's landscape. He named the region Hoenn, which in Japanese kanji means rich and green. The game focused on exploring the seas, both on the surface and deep underground. Junichi hoped that this focus would help bring his own childhood adventures to generations of new children. Junichi really wanted to add an element of mystery and exploration to the games. One of the things that had made the original Pokemon games so successful had been the inclusion of Mew, a seemingly impossible to catch creature that became the basis of a thousand playground whispers. Junichi wanted to see how far this idea could be taken, and his team of developers were allowed free reign to come up with bizarre, unusual methods for catching Pokemon and unlocking new content within the game. The Pokemon Phoebus hides within a single lake in the game, its location shifting periodically based on a trendy phrase that is popular on the other side of the map. Legendary Pokemon Regis, Registeel and Regirock can only be accessed if the player pays attention to clues hidden in certain caves, written in braille, just to make things even more complicated. Some trainer battles and Pokemon catching events can only be unlocked if the player has access to an E-reader peripheral and a second Game Boy, and also requires very rare physical cards that were only ever released in very limited numbers. The rarest of these, the Eon ticket, sells for around $100 if unused. Perhaps the most obscure element from all of Ruby and Sapphire is Mirage Island. The odds of finding this island are 1 in 10,000, and of course, even if it does appear, it'll fade away 24 hours later. Despite Game Freak having once assumed that Pokemon was finished, Ruby and Sapphire kicked off a new wave of excitement surrounding the games. With Junichi at the helm, the Pokemon series thundered onwards, bringing joy to gamers of all ages. Junichi served as the director for Diamond and Pearl, followed by Black and White, and finally X and Y. He continued to oversee the music of all these games, even as Game Freak's staff grew larger. Junichi also enjoyed interacting with fans of the series and adding in little easter eggs and tricks. These often produce extra wrinkles to the mysterious algorithms that underpin a lot of the game's secrets, making it even more difficult to understand what makes the game tick. Pokemon fans first began to really sit up and pay attention to Junichi when they learned about the so-called Masuda method, a process for hatching special shiny Pokemon eggs. Shiny Pokemon are incredibly rare and are desirable because they have a slightly different color than most in their species. In a post on his blog, Junichi revealed that Pokemon parents who come from different parts of the globe and whose data is recorded in different languages are more likely to produce shiny Pokemon eggs. This was done in an effort to increase the use of the online global trading function that debuted in Diamond and Pearl. The Masuda method for hatching eggs quickly brought Junichi a lot more attention from fans around the world and he relished it, doing his best to stay in contact online and sharing thoughts and notes from his game design experience. For years, Junichi spearheaded the Pokemon game series. Finally, when Pokemon Sun and Moon came around, he stepped to the side, allowing a new director, Shigeru Omori, to take charge, although he still stayed involved as a producer on the games. Even as he relinquished control of the main Pokemon games to younger members of Game Freak, Junichi continued to innovate. He was involved from an early stage with the development of Pokemon Go and was even the person to originally suggest introducing brand new Pokemon through mobile games. But there was one more pair of Pokemon games that Junichi would direct. In what he decided would probably be his final turn in the director's chair, Junichi took charge of Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee. It felt fitting, to a certain extent, for his last time directing Pokemon games, Junichi was going back to where things all began. The goal behind Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee was to create something for younger fans. Pokemon Go had taken the world by storm, bringing many, many new players to the series for the first time. But not everyone could play the smartphone game. Junichi knew that many children were kept away from the experience because they didn't actually own a smartphone. So the solution was to create a Pokemon Go game that was deliberately designed to be very simple and accessible for younger players. Junichi imagined this as the defining modern living room Pokemon RPG. Where the majority of Game Freak's previous games in the series had all been handheld and personal, this game would use the Nintendo Switch's docked mode to allow an entire family to play together. This meant including multiplayer modes. It meant creating a new way of throwing Pokeballs to catch Pokemon so that all members of the family, of any age or skill, could participate. It also meant simplifying the Pokemon experience as much as possible, removing a lot of the complexities that the series had picked up over the years. Junichi knew that many gamers spent hours hatching eggs to create the perfect Pokemon, but he didn't want this game to be that complex. This new project needed to be as simple and easy to understand as possible. As such, it was decided to remake Pokemon Yellow version, a tie-in to the early episodes of the Pokemon cartoon series. This game would be soft and light, matching the bright and friendly tone of the anime. It would feature characters and Pokemon that young audiences would be familiar with, and it would build on the simplest generation of Pokemon games. Only after committing to this game did the team realise that Let's Go Pikachu would be released exactly 20 years after Pokemon Yellow. This seemed like the perfect happy accident. Returning to the land of Kanto meant revisiting Satoshi Tajiri's original view of the Pokemon world. Junichi had done this before, but this time he wanted to bring a little of his own childhood experience, paying tribute to long summers spent playing in the countryside. The Let's Go games were designed to feel like they took place in the perfect, warm, sunny summer of adventure, yet again bringing youthful joy and wonder to the series. If this was to be the home console version of a smartphone title, Junichi wanted to approach the Let's Go games with a mobile attitude. The game was designed for a pick-up-and-play mentality. Instead of spending hours hacking through a puzzle in the overworld, players should be able to instinctively know where to go. This was easier said than done. Junichi felt that the original Game Boy games with their blocky pixels and monochrome color palette were so simple as to be fantastically clear. If there was something on screen, the player could probably interact with it. Not so with the new games and their pretty, detailed artwork. So the team worked hard to make the game's artwork carefully lead the player by the hand, making sure that younger players would never get lost. This improvement in graphical fidelity also meant coming up with a definitive answer to how Pokemon should move. Junichi wanted each of the game's 151 pocket monsters to have their own distinctive gate. He came up with his basic ideas for how each Pokemon would walk. For example, Venusaur should hop around like a giant frog. Then, he handed his ideas to the animation team and let them use some imagination to flesh out his initial thoughts. One that really caught his eye was Nidoran. The animator used reference footage of rabbits hopping around to create a natural movement animation for these Pokemon, and it fitted absolutely perfectly. In this way, the team hoped that their movement animations would feel rooted in the real world, even though the pocket monsters were inherently fantastical. Junichi's career as a director of main series Pokemon games might be drawing to a close, but his legacy was far from over. He had a lot of work still ahead of him. There was plenty more to do, and make, and see, and learn. As he handed the reins of Game Freak over to the next generation of developers, he left behind a lasting legacy of fantastic Pokemon games. His work had inspired millions of children of all ages around the world. The moral of the story is that you should never let go of your childlike sense of wonder and imagination. Junichi Masuda's early, formative experiences while on holiday in rural Kyushu created the basis for his entire career. He drew from these memories time and time again in order to build games that have won a special place in the hearts of gamers of all ages. Junichi never lost his spirit of adventure, the same spirit that burns within each one of us. Find your passion, whatever it may be, work towards your goals, and have fun while doing so. Your very own legend is about to unfold. A world of dreams and adventures awaits. Let's go.