Enix was a Japanese multimedia publisher who handled and oversaw video games, manga, guidebooks, and merchandise. It was founded in 1975 by Yasuhiro Fukushima as Eidansha Boshu Service Center, initially as a tabloid publisher and later attempting t ...

was a Japanese

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

publishing company founded in September 1975 by Yasuhiro Fukushima. Initially a tabloid publisher named Eidansha Boshu Service Center, it ventured in 1982 into video game publishing for Japanese

home computer Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a s ...

s such as the

PC-8800 series The , commonly shortened to PC-88, are a brand of Zilog Z80-based 8-bit home computers released by Nippon Electric Company (NEC) in 1981 and primarily sold in Japan. The PC-8800 series sold extremely well and became one of the four major Japane ...

, the X1 series, and the

FM-7 The FM-7 ("Fujitsu Micro 7") is a home computer created by Fujitsu. It was first released in 1982 and was sold in Japan and Spain. It is a stripped-down version of Fujitsu's earlier FM-8 computer, and during development it was referred to as th ...

. Enix initially found games to release by holding contests for programming hobbyists and publishing the winners, with the first titles appearing in February 1983. Enix continued to hold contests and publish the winners through 1993. When Enix moved into traditional publishing for

video game console A video game console is an electronic device that Input/output, outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can typically be played with a game controller. These may be home video game console, home consoles, which are generally ...

s in 1985, it began with

ports Ports collections (or ports trees, or just ports) are the sets of makefiles and Patch (Unix), patches provided by the BSD-based operating systems, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, as a simple method of installing software or creating binary packages. T ...

of two of its more successful games, ''

Door Door is a single-screen puzzle-platform game by Enix published in Japan in 1983. Originally released for the NEC PC-8801, it was ported to other platforms, including the Family Computer. Controlling a small character named Chun, the player is taske ...

'' (1983) and ''

The Portopia Serial Murder Case is a 1983 adventure game designed by Yuji Horii and published by Enix. It was first released on the NEC PC-6001 and has since been ported to other personal computers, the Family Computer (Famicom), mobile phone services and most recently, Win ...

'' (1983). From that point onward, Enix served as a publisher for both video games developed independently by other companies as well as for titles in franchises owned by Enix and created by licensed developers. Enix's flagship franchise was the ''

Dragon Quest previously published as ''Dragon Warrior'' in North America until 2005, is a series of role-playing video games created by Japanese game designer Yuji Horii (Armor Project), character designer Akira Toriyama (Bird Studio), and composer Koi ...

'' series of console games, developed primarily by Chunsoft; some of the games, such as ''

Dragon Quest VII ''Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past'' is a 2000 role-playing video game developed by Heartbeat and ArtePiazza, and published by Enix for the PlayStation. The game was produced by Yuji Horii, who has presided over the ''Dragon Qu ...

'' (2000), have sold millions of copies, and the series as a whole has sold over 85 million copies as of March 2022. On April 1, 2003, Enix and Japanese video game developer and publisher

Square In geometry, a square is a regular polygon, regular quadrilateral. It has four straight sides of equal length and four equal angles. Squares are special cases of rectangles, which have four equal angles, and of rhombuses, which have four equal si ...

merged to form

Square Enix is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational holding company, video game publisher and entertainment conglomerate. It releases role-playing video game, role-playing game franchises, such as ''Final Fantasy'', ''Dragon Quest'', and '' ...

, with Enix legally absorbing Square. Between 1985 and April 2003, Enix published 95 video games for 56 developers on 12 systems, 65 titles of which were exclusive to Japan. Only one game, '' King Arthur & the Knights of Justice'' (1995), was not released in Japan at all, with the remainder appearing in Japan as well as either the North American or

PAL region Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a color encoding system for analog television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25& ...

s. Enix served as the Japanese publisher for all of the games released in that region that it was involved in with the exceptions of ''

Paladin's Quest ''Paladin's Quest'', originally released as in Japan, is a utopian/dystopian science fantasy role-playing video game developed by Copya System and published in Japan by Asmik Corporation on November 13, 1992, for the Super Nintendo Entertainmen ...

'' (1992) and '' Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen'' (1993), where it served solely as the North American publisher.

Games

This list includes retail games published by Enix during its existence under that name after its transition from hobby programming contests to retail publishing in 1985. Only versions of the games that were published by Enix in at least some regions are included; some games have additional ports to other systems that were only published by Square Enix or other publishers. The release dates given are the earliest release of the game by Enix; some games may have been originally published earlier by other publishers in another region.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Enix videogames Video games developed in Japan Video game lists by company