Enix published Japan’s favourite role-playing game without employing the people who made it. In 1998 a manager told Gamers’ Republic that the company had no plans for an in-house development team: “We’re a publishing house, we have game producers and managers, but all the programmers and graphic designers are either freelance or working in small companies.” That model went back to the early 1980s, when Enix ran a game-programming contest and signed up its winners. Two of them, the writer Yuji Horii and the programmer Koichi Nakamura, made Dragon Quest for it in 1986.
Fast facts
- Founded: September 1975 as Eidansha Boshu Service Center; renamed Enix Corporation in August 1982.
- Founder: Yasuhiro Fukushima.
- Best known for: publishing Dragon Quest, developed by Chunsoft for its first five games.
- Other games: The Portopia Serial Murder Case, ActRaiser, Star Ocean, Bust A Move.
- Ended: absorbed Square on 1 April 2003 and took the name Square Enix.
The contest
The company that became Enix was set up in September 1975 and took the name Enix Corporation in August 1982, according to Square Enix’s corporate history. In the early 1980s it ran a contest for amateur game programmers. Horii, then a freelance writer who programmed games on his own computer, won a place, and, in Edge’s words, “got a foot in the door with the publisher with which he’s remained until today”. His first game for Enix was a detective adventure, The Portopia Serial Murder Case (1983), for the NEC PC-6001. Nakamura’s first success was a puzzle game, Door Door, in the same competition, and he went on to set up his own studio, Chunsoft, when he was 19.
Enix’s early catalogue for Japanese home computers was mixed. Retro Gamer’s guide to Japanese computers notes that it “openly made adult-only titles”, as several companies that later became large did at the time.
Dragon Quest
Nakamura worked with Horii on the Famicom version of Portopia, and it was Nakamura who proposed to Enix that he make a role-playing game. Akira Toriyama, the artist of the manga Dragon Ball, drew the characters, and the composer Koichi Sugiyama, whom Enix approached after he sent back an appreciative questionnaire card for one of its shogi games, wrote the music. Dragon Quest came out on the Famicom in May 1986. Chunsoft developed the first five games of the series and Enix published them. Edge later credited the first with laying out “the fundamentals of the Japanese RPG”.
By the third game a Dragon Quest launch was national news. Compute! reported in June 1988 that Dragon Quest III had sold more than a million copies in a single day, with “unbelievably long lines” on television. The story that Japan then passed a law against weekday releases is not supported by public sources; Gamasutra reported in 2005 that Enix itself had changed its policy of releasing new games on weekdays after complaints about absences from school and work. In America the first game came out as Dragon Warrior in 1989, published by Nintendo; Enix published the sequels there through its own company, Enix America. After Dragon Warrior IV in 1992, Edge noted, Enix did not release another Dragon Quest in the US until Dragon Warrior VII on the PlayStation in 2001.
A publisher of other people’s games
The Dragon Quest model, a publisher’s producer working with an outside studio, ran through the rest of Enix’s list. The German magazine Video Games explained in 1992 that Enix had teamed up with the programming team Quintet to give itself a second pillar beside Dragon Quest. Quintet’s first game for it was ActRaiser (1990), a mixture of side-scrolling action and god game with music by Yuzo Koshiro, followed by Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia. tri-Ace made Star Ocean: The Second Story for the PlayStation, the sequel to a Super Famicom original. In 1995 Edge described a rivalry so close that when Square announced Chrono Trigger, “arch-rival Enix was quick to counter with news of a new instalment of Dragon Quest”, and it reported that Enix had been “combing the UK’s development community in search of potential partners for a European push”. One Enix producer, Mr Futami, whose games included ActRaiser, told the magazine that “it can take up to two years to decide upon some of the finer aspects of the game”.
On the PlayStation Enix also published odder things. Bust A Move (1998) was a dance game; the manager who spoke to Gamers’ Republic explained that “a dance game like Bust a Move hasn’t been done before. So just by creating the first one, we’ll automatically be the top one.” He also said that Enix was no longer only a game company. Enix had run a publishing business since 1988, and in some years, he said, publishing earned more than software.
Merging with Square
At the end of 2002 Square and Enix announced that they would merge. Legally, Square’s assets and liabilities were absorbed by Enix, which then took the name Square Enix on 1 April 2003; Square’s president, Yoichi Wada, headed the new company. Edge presented it as a match between “Square’s success in the west” and “Enix’s domestic success”. Looking back in 2010, the same magazine judged that in the rivalry between the two, Enix had been “easily winning — on home turf, at least” until they merged. In 2008 Square Enix became a holding company, Square Enix Holdings, and Dragon Quest continued under the new name, with Horii, Toriyama and Sugiyama still working on it.
Sources
- Square Enix Holdings, corporate history (web): Eidansha Boshu Service Center founded September 1975; renamed Enix Corporation August 1982; the publishing business started in March 1988; the merger in April 2003; the holding company in October 2008. https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/company/history.html
- Wikipedia, “Enix” (accessed October 2026) (web, secondary): Yasuhiro Fukushima as founder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enix
- Edge issue 217, August 2010, pp. 62–67, “The story of Dragon Quest”: Horii, the Enix contest and Portopia; Nakamura, Chunsoft and the first five games; Nakamura’s proposal of a role-playing game; the fundamentals of the Japanese RPG; the rivalry with Square and the 2003 merger; Dragon Warrior and the gap between IV and VII in the US.
- Retro Gamer Videogames Hardware Handbook, volume 2 (2010), p. 80: Nakamura’s Door Door in Enix’s game-design competition and Chunsoft founded when he was 19; Enix’s adult-only computer games.
- Compute! issue 97, June 1988, “News & Notes”: Dragon Quest III, a million copies in one day.
- David Jenkins, “Student Arrested In Dragon Quest Death Threat”, Gamasutra, 23 February 2005 (web, secondary): Enix changing its policy of weekday releases. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/pc/student-arrested-in-i-dragon-quest-i-death-threat
- GamePro “Video Game Greatest Hits”, July 1991, p. 17, and Computer and Video Games issue 124, March 1992, p. 20: Dragon Warrior sequels from Enix America.
- Edge issue 22, July 1995, pp. 49–51: the Square–Enix rivalry, Chrono Trigger and Dragon Quest; Enix’s search for UK partners; Mr Futami on development time.
- Video Games (Germany), February 1992, p. 84: Soul Blazer review; Enix’s partnership with Quintet and ActRaiser as Quintet’s first game.
- Super Play issue 26, December 1994, p. 40: Illusion of Gaia (Quintet/Enix).
- Gamers’ Republic issue 5, October 1998, pp. 97–98: interview with Hideki Yamamoto of Enix (no in-house programmers; Bust A Move; publishing sometimes earning more than games); p. 100: Star Ocean: The Second Story, developer tri-Ace, publisher Enix, sequel to the Super Famicom game.
- Edge issue 119, January 2003, p. 13, “Square and Enix join forces”: Square’s assets absorbed by Enix; the new company headed by Yoichi Wada.