History
Enix was founded on September 22, 1975 as Eidansha Boshu Service Center by Japanese architect-turned-entrepreneur Yasuhiro Fukushima. The company initially published tabloids that advertised real estate. After a failed attempt to go nationwide in 1982, the newly renamed Enix began its foray into the gaming market by holding a personal computer game programming contest. One of the winners was Love Match Tennis, created by Yuji Horii. It would go to become one of the company's first PC releases. Another winner was the puzzle game Door Door by Koichi Nakamura, which would become one of the company's better known home computer titles. The game was subsequently ported to the Nintendo Family Computer, but never saw any form of release outside of Japan. Nakamura would stay on board as one Enix's key programmers.
Over the next few years, Enix published several video games for various Japanese home computer systems. Rather than developing games within its own company, Enix would continue to outsource the production of its games to other developers through the use of royalties. Enix is perhaps most famous for publishing the Dragon Quest series of console games (released as Dragon Warrior in North America until 2005) developed by Chunsoft. Key members of the developer's staff consisted of director Koichi Nakamura, writer Yuuji Horii, artist Akira Toriyama, and composer Koichi Sugiyama, among others. The first game in the Famicom-based RPG series was released in 1986, and would eventually sell 1.5 million copies in Japan, establishing Dragon Quest as the company's most profitable franchise.
In 1991, Enix registered its stock with the Japan Securities Dealers Association, later known as JASDAQ. Enix soon began publishing manga from its shonen magazine Monthly Shōnen Gangan. The company established ties with more video game developers and would go on to publish several games for fourth, fifth, and sixth generation game consoles. Despite the announcement that Enix's long-time competitor Square Co., Ltd. would develop exclusively for Sony PlayStation, Enix announced in January 1997 that it would release games for both Nintendo and Sony consoles. This caused a significant rise in stock for both Enix and Sony. By November 1999, Enix was listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange's 1st section, indicating it as a "large company."
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