Satoshi Tajiri and Ken Sugimori established Game Freak as a game company in 1989.
Game Freak began as a self-published video-game magazine created by Tajiri. Sugimori later joined as its illustrator after discovering the magazine. Their collaboration gradually shifted from writing about games to making them, leading to the formation of the development company Game Freak.
One of the company’s early games was Quinty, an action-puzzle title released for the Nintendo Entertainment System and later known in North America as Mendel Palace. Years afterward, Game Freak developed Pokémon for Nintendo’s Game Boy.
The year 1989 is easy to mix up with other milestones: the Game Freak magazine dates to the early 1980s, Tajiri conceived Pokémon in 1990, and the first Pokémon games arrived in 1996. The company therefore predates the Pokémon franchise by several years.