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27. Mai 2011 · An in-depth interview with Yuji Horii, creator of Dragon Quest, which remains the most popular console IP in Japan and the root of the country's obsession with RPGs -- a calm center to the storm the game industry faces in the region. Christian Nutt, Contributor. May 27, 2011. 16 Min Read.
- Christian Nutt
18. Feb. 2011 · One of the most well-known game developers in the world, Yuji Horii created Dragon Quest all the way back in 1986, and has been in charge of the series ever since. With each new entry and ...
10. Juli 2010 · Interview: Yuji Horii and a Lifetime of Dragon Questing. The RPG legend talks about Dragon Quest IX, Dexter, and a series built around taking turns. By Michael Thomsen. Updated: May 8, 2012...
20. Sept. 2018 · In the following interview, Horii is joined by series executive producer Yuu Miyake, DQ11 producer Hokuto Okamoto and DQ11 game director Takeshi Uchikawa, as we discuss the legacy that they’re...
- Justin Haywald
- Of Slimes and Men: How Dragon Quest changed everything.
- True Genius
- Getting Into It
- Dragon Warrior
- Games Are Magic
By Jared Petty
Updated: Aug 29, 2018 7:26 pm
Posted: Aug 29, 2018 7:24 pm
I think most of us have an informal mental list of people we wish they could meet, and I think that’s especially true in the entertainment and game industries. I’ll often hear Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima batted around in newsroom conversations, but for me, there’s no higher name in my pantheon of hero worship than Yuji Horii. And now here I am in an upstairs room at Anime Expo in Los Angeles, sitting across the table from him.
What Horii has done can’t be adequately labeled anything but genius.
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It’s been pointed out before that we tend to overstate the presence of genius in the world of entertainment, but what Horii has done can’t be adequately labeled anything else. Much as Warren Robinett did in the United States with Adventure, Horii took a type of game designed to be played on powerful computers using multi-input keyboards and converted the essential mechanics into forms viable on vastly-less-powerful hardware and functional with a controller interface. But his innovations only began there. Horii also took the western-born world of RPGs and instilled it with a manga-inspired aesthetic that made it something remarkably relevant to Japanese culture. He infused the cartoonish artwork and bright palettes of Akira Toriyama and the sweeping symphonies of Koichi Sugiyama into the RPG aesthetic.
“At that time we had RPGs like Wizardry and Ultima for the PC,” says Horii, through an interpreter. “Those type of RPGs were available on the PC, but thereafter, the Famicom, or what we know as the NES, really was a huge hit among the younger children and younger consumers. At that time, most of the games on that platform were action-oriented or action-based. I wanted to figure out a way to bring this kind of fun RPG to that platform, and that’s what we worked hard to achieve. We believe we were able to bring a relatively easily understandable and simple experience to the Famicom and NES devices. We were able to bring the RPG experience to the device.”
We really focused on ensuring people would be able to experience the fun of the story.
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He discovered a kind of delight in the difficulty of the task. “Rather than find it challenging, I found it interesting and fun to think through how to make this happen.” The adaptive work required an enormous discipline and commitment to refinement. The hardware restraints would allow for nothing else. “Trying to figure out ways to include various aspects, elements, and features, and on top of that, to implement a story, the thought process was really interesting. I had a lot of fun and found a lot of enjoyment through that process.
“But of course there were a lot of struggles,” Horii continues. In this day and age of nearly unlimited development resources, it’s difficult to imagine storage limits so severe that even written text was a luxury, but that’s the challenge Horii faced. “We had to limit the number of written kanji we included in the game, and to make it a focus on the main character as well. There were a lot of ways we went around the space issue.”
Horii got into gaming in the early 80s, and found his road to development through an unusual path.
“Originally I wanted to become a manga artist. I had a love for stories early on. But then I discovered computers, and was impressed by the interactivity you get through them,” says Horii.
I believe it’s easier for humans to be determined to believe something if the goal is clear from the get-go.
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His first game, Love Match Tennis, was a hobbyist project submitted as a contest entry: “I initially created it as a hobby. I had purchased my own personal computer, and I created that game for myself. I was playing that tennis game for enjoyment, and because it was so fun learning to program.” Using his mastery of Z80 machine language, he hacked together an impressive sports game and caught the attention of Enix.
Sitting in the interview listening to him describe this, I’m nodding to myself. I can identify a bit... my own humble career in video games began after being noticed by entertainment media outlets through a couple of game contest entries. It’s strange to feel like I shared a little something with a hero.
Encountering Dragon Quest (and particularly its early iteration, Dragon Warrior) was a defining experience for me. Ever since first being exposed to Ultima III on the Apple II, I’d become maniacally obsessed with the idea of computer role-playing games: the commitment to detail and order, the relatively complex stories, the mysteries, the XP system as a metaphor for character growth, and a world that continually unfolded as my own skills and expertise developed.
Dragon Quest isn’t simple... it’s pure.
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I knew even then that Dragon Warrior was a distilled experience. Its single-character vs. single-enemy combat was vastly simplified in comparison to older games like Ultima III or Wizardry, its scope less ambitious. But I found that purposeful refinement deeply compelling. Dragon Quest took the explore/fight/loot/grow loop of RPGs and boiled it down to a form that was more than simply accessible. As I said in my recent review: “Dragon Quest isn’t simple... it’s pure.”
Horii’s involvement in the US conversion was limited, as the localization was handled by Nintendo, and subcontracted to none other than future Nintendo president Satoru Iwata.
I was moved because there were a lot of people who brought it to our signing – the actual game cartridge.
Horii has purposefully chosen to return to a single-player, traditional JRPG epic.
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More than three decades after his initial work on Dragon Quest, Horii is now observing the US release of his eleventh mainline Dragon Quest game to spectacular critical acclaim. When we spoke in LA, the North American localization of Dragon Quest hadn’t yet been reviewed by American critics, but Horii seemed humbly and happily optimistic, in no small part because of its very successful Japanese release last year, and perhaps still more by his faith in the unique situation that exists when building a new installment of such a venerable series.
Dragon Quest X was a successful MMO in Japan, but now in an era when many creators are doubling down on games as a service, Horii has purposefully chosen to return to a single-player, traditional JRPG epic. He refers to the game as “friendly,” pointing out that it’s something practically anyone can enjoy regardless of their familiarity with games.
“Really Dragon Quest 11 is essentially a culmination of 30 years of the franchise,” he says. “Within the development staff we have certain people who were very young when the initial Dragon Quests were released. They were perhaps in elementary school when they first played Dragon quest, or they may not even have been born back then. So various generations really came together to wholeheartedly put all their heart and soul into this work to bring it to life.”
Making games is joyful.
27. Aug. 2018 · Yuji Horii, creator of the Dragon Quest series, talks about Dragon Quest 11 on the PS4 and PC, the franchise’s struggles in North America, and why he wants to keep making games for years to...
25. Sept. 2019 · Yuji Horii: We do think of many ideas, but in the end, I think we can do a lot within the Dragon Quest series - in fact we have already. So for example, we've added the fun-sized forge, which...
