Game Freak developed the first Pokémon games. The studio created Pokémon Red and Green for Nintendo’s Game Boy, establishing the role-playing, collecting, battling, and trading systems that defined the franchise.
Game Freak began as a video game magazine founded by Satoshi Tajiri and later became a development company. Tajiri, artist Ken Sugimori, and their team spent years developing the original Pokémon project before its Japanese release in 1996.
Nintendo published the games and provided important hardware and business support, while Creatures later became involved in Pokémon development and the trading card game. A common mistake is naming The Pokémon Company as the original developer; that company manages the brand and was created later.