View source for Meta:Yuji Horii

{{Development Staff Infobox
  | name           = Yuji Horii
  | jpname         = 堀井 雄二
  | romaji         = Horii Yūji
  | image          = HoriiSakurai.png
  | description    = Yuji Horii (left), next to Masahiro Sakurai (right), during an interview held in 2019.
  | birth date     = January 6, 1954
  | birth place    = Awaji Island, Japan
  | death date     = 
  | death place    = 
  | works          = Designer, writer
  | family         = 
  | youtube url    = 
  | youtube name   = 
  | twitter url    = YujiHorii
  | twitter name   = @YujiHorii
  | bluesky url    = 
  | bluesky name   = 
}}

'''Yuji Horii''' {{JA|堀井 雄二|Horii Yūji}}, born January 6, 1954, is a Japanese video game designer and scenario writer best known as the creator of the ''{{Meta|Dragon Quest}}'' series of role-playing games, supervising and writing the scenario for ''Chrono Trigger'', as well as the first visual novel adventure game ''Portopia Serial Murder Case''.
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==Career==
Horii graduated from Waseda University's Department of Literature. He also worked as a freelance writer for newspapers, comics, and magazines, including the ''Famicom Shinken'' video games column that ran in ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'' from 1985 to 1988. He then entered in an {{Meta|Enix}}-sponsored game programming contest, where he placed with ''Love Match Tennis'', a tennis video game, motivating him to become a video game designer. Horii then created ''The Portopia Serial Murder Case'' along with {{Meta|Chunsoft}}, a game that later inspired Hideo Kojima, of ''Metal Gear'' fame, to enter the video game industry. It is the first part of the ''Yuji Horii Mysteries'' trilogy, along with its successors ''Okhotsk ni Kiyu: Hokkaido Rensa Satsujin'' (1984), and ''Karuizawa Yūkai Annai'' (1985).

After creating several more visual novel adventure games, Horii went on to create ''Dragon Quest'', which is said to have created the blueprint for Japanese console role-playing games, taking inspiration from ''Portopia'', as well as Wizardry and Ultima. He was a fan of Apple PC role-playing 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, influenced by his work on ''Portopia''. His works also include the ''Itadaki Street'' series. Horii was also a supervisor of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System game, ''Chrono Trigger'', which had multiple game endings, with Horii appearing 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 {{Meta|Square Enix}}, a contract established with Enix before the company merged with Square. He is on the selection committee for the annual Super Dash Novel Rookie of the Year Award.

==Works==
In the ''Mystery Dungeon'' franchise, he appeared only for the {{DragonQuestSeriesTitle}}. Of this, he was an executive producer for one game.

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:center; margin:auto; width:75%"
!Year
!Game 
!Role
!Ref.
|-
!1993
|{{Torneko1Title}}
|Original Scenario and Game Design
|
|-
!1999
|{{Torneko2PS1Title}}
|Original Scenario
|
|-
!2001
|{{Torneko2GBATitle}}
|Original Scenario
|
|-
!2004
|{{Torneko3GBATitle}}
|Executive Producer
|
|}

==See Also==
{{Mystery Dungeon Franchise Development Staff Navbox}}

==References==
* <ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuji_Horii</ref> Wikipedia
<references />

[[Category:Designers]]
[[Category:Writers]]
[[Category:Staff]]