What was the first Pokémon video game company, Game Freak, originally founded as?

Game Freak was originally founded as a video game fanzine. Satoshi Tajiri created the magazine in 1983, writing about arcade games, strategies, and game secrets.

Ken Sugimori became the fanzine’s illustrator after encountering it at a dōjinshi shop. Tajiri and Sugimori later transformed the publication into an informal game-development group, and Game Freak was incorporated as a company on April 26, 1989.

The company’s first published game was Quinty, released by Namco in 1989. Game Freak eventually developed Pokémon Red and Green for Nintendo’s Game Boy, turning the small creative group into one of the best-known video game studios in Japan.

The name Game Freak therefore predates Pokémon. It did not begin as a Pokémon-specific company, and it was not originally Nintendo’s internal studio. Its magazine roots explain why the company name sounds like a gaming publication rather than a fictional world or a character.