Gazing up at the orange Carrot building in Setagaya, Tokyo, you would have no idea it was the home of Game Freak, the developer behind one of the world's most popular video game franchises. The Pokémon logo isn’t displayed anywhere in the lobby, and Pokémon Go’s nearby PokéStops don’t offer any hint of the studio’s existence. Across the street at a 7-Eleven, a banner waves over the door to promote the most recent Pokémon movie, but that’s currently at every one of the convenience stores throughout Japan.
Once you make your way to Game Freak’s floor, a red sign with the company’s logo makes an appearance in the hall, but you won’t see your first Pokémon until you make it past a locked door. The waiting area is a dark room with a single chair, ominous floor lighting, a backlit Game Freak logo, and a brightly lit, slowly rotating globe.
This feature originally appeared in print issue 293.
Junichi Masuda, Game Freak’s co-founder and Pokémon’s longtime programmer, producer, director, and (perhaps most famously) composer, lets us into the studio and tells us the globe in the lobby serves as a daily reminder of Pokémon’s global reach. We take off our shoes to walk through the studio, which Masuda says is done to make the environment feel as comfortable and as close to home as possible, especially since Game Freak's first office was in someone's house.
The development floor is open with few sectioned-off offices, and Pokémon plushies are scattered everywhere. Masuda shows us the meeting rooms, each one specially designed by the staff. The Gaia room has a large fish tank and is covered with plants, which the staff takes care of themselves. Masuda says the staff tends to them as a way to remind everyone about the long-term rewards of incremental work. “It’s just like making a video game,” he says. The nearby Saturn room is filled with mirrors that draw your attention to a large television. This room is used when they need to present something on screen.
The most interesting room, however, is the Venus room, located just next to the studio’s common area. It feels like the bedroom of a young girl, with pink walls and a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, which Masuda does not immediately dismiss as being the inspiration for Chandelure. We take a look at the heart of the development floor, a casual meeting area filled with toys and board games neatly arranged on shelves, before moving to the Jupiter room. This extensive area serves a museum of sorts for Game Freak, with copies of all of its games in glass cases, a collection of neatly arranged Pokémon plushies, a stack of every console you can imagine in the opposite corner, and miniature figures of every single Pokémon – they think. More than 800 different Pokémon exist in the games, so you can’t blame them for being unsure.
Shigeru Ohmori (left) and Junichi Masuda hold a faux meeting in the Venus room
Game Freak's Beginnings
Before Game Freak even thought about merging "pocket" and "monster" into a single word, it was a print publication focused on covering Japan’s arcade scene. Headed by Satoshi Tajiri, credited as the creator of Pokémon, Game Freak the mini-comic (as Masuda refers to it) would interview arcade owners and get tips for playing popular arcade games. During this time, Tajiri met Masuda, and the two became fast friends.
“The Famicom system released in Japan, and video games in the home were starting to become a thing,” Masuda says. “We knew we couldn’t create an arcade game, but if it was on the Famicom, we knew we might be able to do something ourselves.” Tajiri and friends got to work on a game called Quinty, which would later release in America as Mendel Palace. Bandai Namco (called Namcot at the time) would eventually publish the game, but only after Game Freak became a formal company. Namcot representatives told Tajiri they wanted to form contracts with companies, not individuals. “When we first started making the game we didn’t really have any official development equipment, so we just sort of had to hack the Famicom and figure out how it worked so we could develop on it ourselves without the official development tools,” Masuda says.
At this stage, Tajiri was already talking to Nintendo about making games, but it wasn’t until Nintendo offered Yoshi, the 1991 puzzle game, to Game Freak that the relationship became official. Yoshi was successful, which lead to a mouse-based Super Famicom game called Mario & Wario that never released in America.
Tajiri continues to be an important part of Game Freak, but he is less hands-on with game creation. Masuda handles the creative side of development today, producing and directing the majority of Pokémon’s major releases. “[Tajiri] really serves the role of executive producer on all of the games. Depending on the project he will look at the game and be more hands-on, but a lot of his time is spent researching various media forms,” Masuda says. “When it comes to running the company and doing game development and press interviews, he just kind of leaves that up to me.”
After drawing circles for Game Freak, Nintendo, and former producer Creatures, Masuda explained. “Game Freak? We develop all the main Pokémon games. Originally, Creatures, they were the producers of the game. Nintendo was the seller of the games – the distributor. So that was the original structure of Pokémon games. In terms of who owns the rights to the games, it’s these three companies.”
These days, Creatures mostly handles the Pokémon card game, and The Pokémon Company was formed in 1998 – shortly before the release of Pokémon Gold and Silver – to manage the brand and all of its assorted merchandising. In terms of genuine ownership, Masuda says it’s one-third each for Game Freak, Creatures, and Nintendo. “It’s a little more complicated than that in certain scenarios, like for example, the producing role that Creatures originally held went to The Pokémon Company, and a percentage of the rights went with that so there are certain complications, and it depends on the project, but there is no situation where Nintendo and The Pokémon Company will put pressure on Game Freak or something like that,” Masuda says.
Masuda points specifically to Game Freak’s relationship with Nintendo as a friendship, which is why Game Freak only makes Pokémon games for Nintendo platforms, even when its other projects release with other publishers for other platforms. “Everyone really knows Nintendo; there is a familiarity with the brand, and they have that really strong brand and Pokémon being associated with that and being affiliated with that brand is very important,” Masuda says.
When asked if Pokémon would ever appear on another platform, Masuda says it is highly unlikely. “With Pokémon, at least, we really feel it is really important to be with Nintendo, specifically with the Pokémon titles, so I don’t think that would ever happen.”
Game Freak's Beginnings | How To Make Pokémon | Red, Green, And Yellow | Gold Silver, And Crystal | Ruby, Sapphire, And Emerald | FireRed And LeafGreen | Diamond, Pearl, And Platinum | HeartGold And SoulSilver | Black And White | Black 2 And White 2 | X And Y | Omega Ruby And Alpha Sapphire | Sun And Moon | The Future Of Pokémon
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