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. 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. He is on the selection committee for the annual
Super Dash Novel Rookie of the Year Award. == Works ==