Game Freak’s first commercially released video game was Quinty.
Quinty was an action-puzzle game developed by Game Freak and published by Namco for the Nintendo Entertainment System in Japan in 1989. It was later released in North America under the name Mendel Palace, which is why the two titles are sometimes mistaken for separate games.
The game predates Pokémon by several years and shows Game Freak’s earlier focus on compact arcade-style ideas. Its development helped establish the company after Satoshi Tajiri and Ken Sugimori moved from publishing a video-game magazine to making commercial software.
Quinty is not a Pokémon title, but it is an important part of the franchise’s origin story. Game Freak’s experience on earlier projects helped the studio grow before it began the long development of Pokémon Red and Green, released in Japan in 1996.