In the late 1970s a boy in Machida, a rural suburb of Tokyo, was so devoted to catching beetles that his friends called him Dr. Bug. Then the Japanese economic boom paved over his fields and woods. This episode traces how Satoshi Tajiri's loss of that habitat drove him first into arcades and Dig Dug, then into a hand-stapled fanzine called Game Freak, and finally to a Game Boy link cable he imagined insects crawling across, producing the highest-grossing media franchise in history.

Drawing on translated 1990s developer interviews and biographical profiles, we cover Tajiri skipping school for arcades, taking apart his Famicom, recruiting illustrator Ken Sugimori through the fanzine, shipping Quinty with Namco in 1989, and pitching Nintendo a cooperative trading game its executives did not quite understand. Then the six-year development: miss ...