# Enix - House: Publisher - Date: 1975–2003 - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/enix/ > A real-estate advertising firm turned game publisher, Enix found its stars through a 1982 programming contest and used them to make Dragon Quest, the game that taught Japan to love the RPG. **Why it matters:** Enix published Dragon Quest in 1986 and so did more than any other company to turn the Western computer RPG into the Japanese console RPG; its 2003 merger with Square created Square Enix, owner of both of Japan's great RPG franchises. ## Quick answers **What was Enix?** A real-estate advertising firm turned game publisher, Enix found its stars through a 1982 programming contest and used them to make Dragon Quest, the game that taught Japan to love the RPG. **When was Enix founded?** Enix was founded in 1975 and was based in Shinjuku, Tokyo (later Shibuya, Tokyo); it closed in 2003. **Who founded Enix?** Yasuhiro Fukushima. **What is Enix known for?** Dragon Quest. **What happened to Enix?** Merged with Square on April 1, 2003; Enix was the legally surviving company, renamed Square Enix. ## History Enix began a long way from dragons. Yasuhiro Fukushima, an entrepreneur trained in architecture, founded Eidansha Boshu Service Center in Tokyo on September 22, 1975, to publish advertising tabloids for real estate. As Japan's home-computer market took shape at the start of the 1980s, he saw a publishing opportunity rather than an engineering one, and on August 30, 1982, the company took a new name, Enix — a play on the mythological phoenix and on ENIAC, the early computer. Fukushima's masterstroke was a talent hunt. The 1982 Enix Game Hobby Program Contest offered ¥1 million in prize money for amateur games, and its winners included a freelance writer named [Yuji Horii](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/yuji-horii/), with the tennis game *Love Match Tennis*, and a young programmer named Koichi Nakamura, with the puzzle game *Door Door*. Enix published their work and kept them close. Horii went on to write the adventure game *The Portopia Serial Murder Case* (1983) for Enix, and Nakamura's studio, Chunsoft, became the company's most important developer. That partnership produced [Dragon Quest](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dragon-quest/), released for Nintendo's Famicom on May 27, 1986. Horii, a fan of [Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/wizardry/) and [Ultima](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/ultima-i/), wanted to bring the Western [Western Computer RPGs (CRPG)](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/computer-rpg/) to a mass Japanese audience; Enix supplied the team that made it approachable, pairing Horii with the manga artist [Akira Toriyama](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/akira-toriyama/) and the composer [Koichi Sugiyama](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/koichi-sugiyama/). The game sold about 1.5 million copies in Japan, and its sequels made the series a national institution. In North America, [Nintendo](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/nintendo/) itself published the game in August 1989 as *Dragon Warrior*, the name changed to avoid a clash with the tabletop game *DragonQuest*. Enix remained, in effect, a publisher without large in-house studios. It commissioned Quintet, publishing that studio's Super Famicom games in Japan beginning with *ActRaiser* (1990), and later tri-Ace, whose *Star Ocean* (1996) and *Valkyrie Profile* (1999) became cult favorites. It moved into manga in 1991 with *Monthly Shōnen Gangan*. Its American arm had a rockier time: Enix America closed in November 1995 when the parent company stopped releasing games in North America, which is why several Quintet titles reached the West only through other publishers or not at all. Enix listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in August 1999. In the early 2000s its great rival [Square / Square Enix](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/square/) was recovering from the costly failure of its film *Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within*. The two companies merged on April 1, 2003. Enix was the legally surviving entity and was renamed Square Enix; Square's president Yoichi Wada led the new company and Fukushima became its honorary chairman. ## Notable work Enix's catalog is dominated by one name. [Dragon Quest](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dragon-quest/) and its sequels fixed the grammar of the [Japanese RPGs (JRPG)](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/japanese-rpg/): a silent hero, a menu of commands, [Turn-based combat](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/turn-based-combat/), towns, churches that save your progress, and a cheerful blue [Slime](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/slime/) as the first enemy most players ever met. *Dragon Quest III* (1988) cemented the franchise as an event in Japan. Around it Enix published a varied list: Quintet's *ActRaiser*, *Soul Blazer* and their successors, tri-Ace's *Star Ocean* and *Valkyrie Profile*, and a long run of PC and console titles aimed at the domestic market. ## Legacy Enix proved that a publisher could shape a genre without writing a line of code, by finding talent and putting the right people in a room. Its contest discovered the two men who built [Dragon Quest](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dragon-quest/), and its alliance with [Toriyama](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/akira-toriyama/) and [Sugiyama](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/koichi-sugiyama/) gave the Japanese RPG its look and sound. The 2003 merger united the houses behind *Dragon Quest* and [Final Fantasy](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/final-fantasy/), rivals that had defined the [The Japanese Line: Console RPGs](https://www.lanternhall.org/chronicle/japanese-line/) for seventeen years. Horii's and Toriyama's earlier collaboration with Square's [Hironobu Sakaguchi](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/hironobu-sakaguchi/) on [Chrono Trigger](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/chrono-trigger/) (1995) had already shown what the two traditions could make together; under one roof, Square Enix has kept both franchises running ever since. ## Facts - Yasuhiro Fukushima founded the company on September 22, 1975, as Eidansha Boshu Service Center, a publisher of real-estate advertising tabloids. - The name Enix, adopted on August 30, 1982, played on both the mythological phoenix and the early computer ENIAC. - Its 1982 Game Hobby Program Contest offered a ¥1 million prize; winners included [Yuji Horii](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/yuji-horii/) and Koichi Nakamura, the future makers of [Dragon Quest](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dragon-quest/). - Enix rarely built games itself: it worked as a publisher, commissioning studios such as Chunsoft, Quintet and tri-Ace. - Enix America shut down in November 1995 when the parent company stopped releasing games in North America. - In the April 1, 2003 merger with Square, Enix was the surviving corporate entity; it was renamed Square Enix. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enix) - [Wikipedia — Square Enix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Enix) - [Square Enix (official)](https://www.square-enix.com/) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.