Yūji Horii (堀井 雄二 Horii Yūji) (also written as Yuuji Horii) (born January 6, 1954 in Awaji Island, Japan) is a Japanese video game designer and scenario writer best known as the creator of the Dragon Quest series of role-playing video games,[1] as well as the visual novel adventure game Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken.[2]
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Dragon Quest is recognized as the first role-playing game to posit the idea of spendable magic points for the resolution of spells and actions. As such, Mr. Horii is acknowledged as the "Father of Mana."[1] Dragon Quest is said to have created the blueprint for Japanese role-playing video games, after being inspired by Origin System's Ultima franchise.[1] He was fan of Apple PC RPG games and was motivated to create Dragon Quest for ordinary gamers, who found such games difficult, and thus he worked on an intuitive control system.[3] Horii is also credited with creating one of the earliest visual novels, Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken, a game that inspired Hideo Kojima (of Metal Gear fame) to enter the video game industry.[2]
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 Love Match Tennis, a tennis video game, motivating him to become a video game designer. His works include the Dragon Quest games, Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken, and the Itadaki Street series. Horii was also a supervisor of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System game, Chrono Trigger. Chrono Trigger had multiple game endings and Horii appeared in one of the endings with the game development staff.
Horii currently heads his own production company, Armor Project, a company that has an exclusive production contract with Square Enix, a contract established with Enix before the company merged with Square. He is currently working on Dragon Quest X: Mezameshi Itsutsu no Shuzoku Online for the Wii. He is on the selection committee for the annual Super Dash Novel Rookie of the Year Award.
In 2009, Horii received a special award at Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association Developers Conference for his work on the Dragon Quest franchise.[4]
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