The Square Enix People Database

Birthdate:: January 06, 1954

Yuji Horii (堀井雄二)

Game Designer

The resemblance is uncanny

Yuji Horii is a Japanese video game designer best known as the co-creator of the Dragon Quest series (along with character designer Akira Toriyama and music composer Koichi Sugiyama). At a time when console RPGs were virtually non-existent, Dragon Quest revolutionized the genre and triggered a gaming explosion in Japan, with other RPGs such as Final Fantasy following its wake.

Horii graduated from Waseda University's Department of Literature. He also worked as a freelance writer for magazines, newspapers, and comics. He placed in an Enix-sponsored game programming contest with a tennis computer game, motivating him to become a video game designer. After creating two simple game designs, his inspiration from American RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons led him to create Dragon Quest. Everything from the story, dialogue and even the rough ideas for the monsters come from him. He is often referred to as the first video game author.

Sources: Dragon Quest Shrine, Wikipedia

Companies: Enix; Square Enix

Other Associations: Armor Project

Creditscredited in 13 publications

Games ⇑⇓	platform	release ⇑⇓	role
Chrono Trigger (credits)	snes	27 Sep 1995	Supervisor
He is credited as supervising the development of Chrono Triger. There were multiple game endings and Horii appeared in one of the endings with the game development staff. Yuji Horii as rendered in Chrono Trigger
Dragon Quest (credits)	nes	Aug 1989	Scenario Designer
Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime (credits)	nds	19 Sep 2006	Executive Producer
Dragon Quest II (credits)	nes	Dec 1990	Scenario Writer
Dragon Quest III (credits)	nes	Mar 1992	Scenario Designer
Dragon Quest IV (credits)	nes	11 Feb 1990	Scenario
Dragon Quest IX (credits)	nds	In development	Game Design
Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors (credits)	wii	24 Feb 2008	Scenario
Dragon Quest V (credits)	snes	27 Sep 1992	Scenario Designer
Dragon Quest VI (credits)	snes	09 Dec 1995	Scenario Designer
Dragon Quest VII (credits)	ps	31 Oct 2001	Game Design
Dragon Quest VII (credits)	ps	31 Oct 2001	Scenario Director
Dragon Quest VIII (credits)	ps2	15 Nov 2005	Scenario, Game Design

News

Dragon Quest IX announced for DS
Today, a Tokyo press conference played host to the announcement of the next installment in Square Enix's flagship Dragon Quest series, Dragon Quest IX: Defender of the Stars, for the Nintendo DS. The title will be developed by Level 5, which was responsible for the highly acclaimed Dragon Quest VIII. With a Wi-Fi component, players will be able to join with others in a similar style to Crystal Chronicles in what series creator Yuuji Horii calls more action-oriented battles. Composer Kouichi Sugiyama also made an appearance and declared that he would compose for Dragon Quest until the day of his untimely demise. A grave decision. Famitsu
12 Dec 2006 by Ziyad ↑ -18 ↓ 3 commentss permalink
Dragon Quest VIII lands in Japan
The highly-anticipated Square Enix RPG, Dragon Quest VIII, is finally on shelves all over Japan, or at least it's supposed to be. With huge turnouts expected, Square Enix has set up a release party in Tokyo. Full Article
28 Nov 2004 by Andrew ↑ 45 ↓ discuss permalink
Square Enix to promote violent behaviour with sword for controller
Screw button-pressing gameplay, says Squenix, we're stripping off the extras and showing you what gaming is really about! Or are we?
05 July 2003 by Rahul ↑ 10 ↓ 7 commentss permalink
Square tops results of Japanese gaming poll
It took a poll of 300 Japanese college-age students to confirm what most shameless Square fanboys already believe in their own little world. Full Article
04 Oct 2002 by Paul ↑ 35 ↓ 3 commentss permalink
The two sides meet
Dragon Quest producer Yuji Horii and Final Fantasy producer Hironobu Sakaguchi meet under Famitsu editors for an interview collaboration. Gamers.com has translated part one of the article. Link
16 Nov 2000 by Matt ↑ 32 ↓ discuss permalink

Interviews
January 16, 2006	Mr Dragon Quest: The Cursed King
May 19, 2005	E3 2005: Yuji Horii discusses Dragon Quest VIII

External Links

Yuji Horii's crappy personal website: Designed and maintained by Horii-san himself!

The Square Enix People Database

Yuji Horii (堀井雄二)

Creditscredited in 13 publications

Games

News

Interviews

External Links

Related Forum Topics

Forums / Tags / Yuji Horii

No Topics

Information about this page

Title:
Message: HTML is allowed, but limited to the following tags: <b> <i> <a> <strike> <big> <small>. Use <blockquote> to quote someone and <del> to hide a spoiler. See Some examples.
	E-mail me whenever someone posts to this thread

Username:
Password:
	or cancel