Yuji Horii

is a Japanese author, video game designer, writer and director best known as the creator of the Dragon Quest franchise, supervising and writing the scenario for Chrono Trigger, and The Portopia Serial Murder Case, released in 1983 as one of the first visual novel adventure games. a contract established with Enix before the company merged with Square, and is also one of the companies who co-own the Dragon Quest franchise alongside Square Enix. In 2025, Horii became the first video game creator to receive the Order of the Rising Sun from the Japanese government for his contributions to the arts.

History Horii was born on January 6, 1954, in Awaji Island, Japan. He 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 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 by himself, 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 The Hokkaido Serial Murder Case: The Okhotsk Disappearance (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 influenced by his work on Portopia.

Honors Order of the Rising Sun, 4th Class, Gold Rays with Rosette (2025)