Game Freak, the developer of the Pokémon games, was founded in 1989.
The company grew out of Game Freak, a self-published video-game magazine created by Satoshi Tajiri. Tajiri and illustrator Ken Sugimori turned the magazine into a video-game development company on April 26, 1989.
One of Game Freak’s early games was Quinty, an action-puzzle title published by Namco for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The company later worked on Nintendo and Sega projects before beginning development on Pocket Monsters, the original Pokémon project.
Game Freak’s history is sometimes confused with the franchise’s launch date. Pokémon Red and Green were released in Japan in 1996, seven years after the studio became a company. Nintendo published the Pokémon games, but Game Freak developed the core role-playing titles. Creatures and Nintendo also became important partners in the ownership, production, and merchandising structure surrounding Pokémon.