The story
Founded by Junichi Masuda, Ken Sugimori and Satoshi Tajiri on Apr 26, 1989.1
Predating the video game company, Game Freak was a doujin video game magazine created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1983. Ken Sugimori joined the circle at a later date as an illustrator after finding the magazine in a shop and liking it. Tajiri also used "Game Freak" as his pen name when he wrote as a freelance writer to publications such as Family Computer Magazine and Famicom Tsūshin.
On April 26, 1989, Tajiri and Sugimori started a video game development company with the same name. One of Game Freak's first games was the Nintendo Entertainment System action and puzzle game Quinty, which was released in North America as Mendel Palace. Its most popular series, Pokémon—the romanized portmanteau of the Japanese brand Pocket Monsters (ポケットモンスター, Poketto Monsutā)—is published and distributed respectively by The Pokémon Company and Nintendo worldwide.
Pokémon Center Co., Ltd. was founded in April 1998 through a joint investment by video game series developer Game Freak, original series publisher Nintendo, and Trading Card Game developer and original series producer Creatures to operate the Pokémon Center stores in Japan. In October 2000, it expanded its operations to cover the entire Pokémon franchise, and rebranded to its current name The Pokémon Company.
In October 2015, Game Freak acquired Koa Games, a mobile development company. The company was subsequently merged into Game Freak on December 1, 2015.
In May 2019, Game Freak director Masayuki Onoue revealed that Game Freak is increasingly prioritizing original game creation, in order to grow the experience of its staff. The company's Gear Project initiative, which encourages creators to pitch original game ideas during quiet periods, has so far resulted in original games HarmoKnight, Pocket Card Jockey, Tembo the Badass Elephant and Giga Wrecker.
In February 2020, Game Freak relocated its headquarters from Carrot Tower in Sangen-jaya to Kanda Square, an office building in Nishikichō shared with a number of Nintendo's Tokyo-based subsidiaries.
In October 2024, nearly a terabyte of data from Game Freak's servers was stolen. Development builds, source code, and test sprites either planned or released for past Pokémon games were found, as well as code names for upcoming Pokémon games, and prototypes of unreleased remakes of Quinty and Yoshi. Shortly afterwards, Game Freak addressed the incident, stating that the leak was due to "unauthorized access to our servers by a third party", which had taken place in August 2024. They also stated that many employees' personal information had been leaked.
From Wikipedia’s article on Game Freak, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4