Game Freak was officially incorporated as a company in 1989. It began as a self-published Japanese video-game fanzine created by Satoshi Tajiri before becoming a development studio.
Tajiri and illustrator Ken Sugimori developed the magazine into a game-making team. The company's early projects included Quinty, a puzzle game published by Namco, and later titles for Nintendo and Sega.
Game Freak began developing Pokémon after Tajiri proposed a creature-collecting game built around the Game Boy Link Cable. That project eventually became Pocket Monsters Red and Green, released in Japan in 1996.
The incorporation date predates Pokémon by several years. This distinction matters because Game Freak existed first as a magazine and development company; Pokémon was the project that made the studio internationally famous.