On what date was the Pokémon developer Game Freak incorporated?

The Pokémon developer Game Freak was incorporated on April 26, 1989. The company was founded in Tokyo by Satoshi Tajiri and Ken Sugimori.

Before becoming a video game company, Game Freak was a self-published video game magazine created by Tajiri in 1983. Sugimori joined as its illustrator, and the pair later expanded the name into a development company. Their early video game work included Quinty, which was released in North America as Mendel Palace.

Game Freak eventually developed the first Pokémon games, Pocket Monsters Red and Green, for Nintendo’s Game Boy. The company remains closely associated with the main Pokémon role-playing game series, although other studios have worked on spin-offs, remakes, and related projects.

A common mix-up is treating 1983 as the company’s founding date. That was the year of the magazine, not the incorporation of the video game developer. The corporate milestone occurred six years later, in 1989.