Game Freak, Inc.

Overview

Game Freak, Inc. is a second-party developer for Nintendo. As a game development company, it was founded on April 26, 1989 by Satoshi Tajiri, although it had previous existed in the capacity of a Japanese video game magazine produced by Tajiri personally. In honor of the founder, the main character of the Pokémon TV series was named Satoshi in Japan (Ash Ketchum in North America). The company is most well-known for their work on the Pokémon RPG series, although they have developed many other games as well. Their first game was a Nintendo Entertainment System puzzle game titled Mendel Palace. Some of the other games that they have worked on include Drill Dozer for the Game Boy Advance, and Yoshi for the NES.

Game Freak the Magazine

Before eventually transforming into a game development company, Game Freak was originally the name of a Japanese independent video game magazine that Satoshi Tajiri produced. Created at a time when there was little in the way of an actual video game press in Japan, Game Freak was the manifestation of Tajiri's aspiration to better connect players and developers, having been inspired when companies he liked would reply to letters that he sent to them. To that end, Game Freak as a magazine focused on arcade games in the form of strategy guides, reviews, and other general purpose articles similar to European and American video game magazines in circulation around the same period. With the first handwritten and hand-drawn issue published in 1983, Game Freak was published intermittently for several years before the last issue was published in September of 1987, with Tojiri making the jump into game development that year with the NES game Mendel Palace.