Satoshi Tajiri and Ken Sugimori started the Game Freak video-game company in 1989.
Game Freak originally existed as a self-published magazine created by Tajiri in 1983. Sugimori later joined as an illustrator after discovering the magazine. Their shared interest in games led them to turn the name into a development company in 1989.
One of the company’s early projects was Quinty, a puzzle and action game published by Namco. It was released outside Japan as Mendel Palace. Game Freak eventually began work on Pocket Monsters, the project that became Pokémon after years of development.
The date is easy to mix up with other milestones. 1983 refers to the magazine, 1996 refers to the Japanese release of the first Pokémon games, and 1998 refers to the creation of The Pokémon Company by Nintendo, Creatures, and Game Freak. The company’s founding therefore predates Pokémon by several years.