Satoshi Tajiri first conceived of Pokemon early in the life of the original Game Boy. He saw the possibilities of the then-revolutionary "link cables" to allow data to transfer between two systems. Game Freak, then a relatively small developer, spent years developing this concept around a role-playing game featuring 151 collectable creature types. Meanwhile, legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto suggested making multiple versions of the game, each with exclusive monsters to trade.