Game Freak

Game Freak is a Japanese video game developer headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, founded on 26 April 1989 by Satoshi Tajiri and Ken Sugimori. The studio grew out of a self-published gaming fanzine of the same name that Tajiri launched in 1983, which Sugimori joined as illustrator after discovering it in a shop. Despite being an independent company, Game Freak has spent the vast majority of its history developing exclusively for Nintendo hardware, co-owning The Pokémon Company alongside Nintendo and Creatures Inc. The Pokémon series, which began with Pokémon Red and Green on the Game Boy in February 1996 following a gruelling six-year development that nearly bankrupted the studio, has grown into the highest-grossing media franchise in history, with the mainline video game series alone selling over 300 million copies worldwide. Game Freak has around 200 employees and relocated to Kanda Square in Tokyo in 2020, a building it shares with Nintendo's Tokyo-based subsidiaries and HAL Laboratory.

While Pokémon has defined the studio commercially, Game Freak has periodically developed original projects outside the franchise through its internal Gear Project initiative, which was established in 2012 to give developers space to pitch new ideas. Past Gear Project titles include HarmoKnight (2012), Tembo the Badass Elephant (2015), and Giga Wrecker (2017). Beast of Reincarnation, directed by Kota Furushima and published by Fictions, is the studio's most ambitious original project to date and its first AAA title, launching 4 August 2026 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC — the first Game Freak game to release on PlayStation and Xbox since Giga Wrecker in 2017.