Development and History
Inspired by the popularity of personal computers in the United States, Yasuhiro Fukushima decided to set up Enix, a PC business, in 1982. Fukushima wasn't a programmer himself, and Enix, in a broad sense, was simply intended to be a publishing company. To pool the talent of individual game designers, Enix sponsored a national programming contest. Three hundred programs were entered into the contest, and the first prize went to programming prodigy and high school student Koichi Nakamura for his puzzle game, Door Door. Yuji Horii placed in the finals of the same contest with a computer tennis game; both were subsequently hired by Enix and the rights to Door Door became property of Enix. Enix published the game on a wide range of Japanese computers, including NEC's PC-8801, Fujitsu's FM-7, and Sharp's MZ-2000. With sales exceeding 200,000 copies, Door Door was a huge success. The popularity of the budding console market prompted a 1985 release on Nintendo's Famicom. In 1986, Enix's third Famicom production and first role-playing video game made Hori and Nakamura household names in Japan: Dragon Quest.
Enix's unique approach as a game company—contracting talent for game development, then publishing the games—started a new trend in the computer and video game industry. Like publishing companies and writers, Enix established the concept of royalties between them and their contractors. In 1984, Nakamura created a relatively exclusive contracting company, christened Chunsoft in honor of Door Door's diminutive hero.
Read more about this topic: Door Door
Famous quotes containing the words development and/or history:
“I can see ... only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.”
—H.A.L. (Herbert Albert Laurens)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)