Editing Yuji Horii

Horii's first success at Enix was the Portopia serial murder case, a screen-by-screen adventure game that tasked the player with unraveling the mysterious circumstances of a violent murder in the eponymous seaside town. The title proved to be a watershed moment for the young Horii, garnering him well deserved respect at Enix and strengthening his working relationship with top company programmer Kōichi Nakamura. Further more, the simple menu-selection system implemented in the game would become a corner stone of the {{Main Series}} series' user input.

In 1985 ''Portopia'' was ported to the {{Famicom}}, greatly improving the machine's software library from the handful of obtuse action titles. This porting success gained Horii further recognition among the gaming community, prompting him to be inaugurated in Weekly ''Shonen Jump's'' ''Famicom KamiKen'' periodical. This bi-monthly article was reflection on current hot titles, game trends, and developer gossip of the period that allowed readers to send in their own essays to be printed in ''Shonen Jump''. When Horii sent in his own article, he was quickly hired as a staff writer. From this connection Horii would put his college education to good use and free-lance his writing skills out to various manga-ka in the magazine as he worked on his games, eventually meeting acclaimed artist Akira Toriyama at an ''SJ'' new year's party. The two became fast friends, and Toriyama would contribute character, monster, and location designs to the series.

With the success of the Famicom port of ''Portopia'', proving that a "slow game" can dominate the sales charts in an action game market, Horii and Nakamura agreed that the timing was right to begin development of the Famicom's first genuine RPG. After a lengthy process of convincing Enix supervisor Yukinobu Chida of the project's  potential for success, the unnamed project was given the greenlight to begin development with Horii as sole scenario writer, Nakamura as lead programmer, and Toriyama as illustrator. Instead of a common ''Wizardry'' clone, the two decided to combine the best aspects of both the aforementioned series and it's chief competitor ''Ultima'' and eliminate the largest design flaws of both in the process. To accomplish this it was decided to use the simple menu-driven command system of Portopia, the first-person battle screen of ''Wizardry'', and the bird's-eye view map exploration of ''Ultima''. Coincidentally, acclaimed composer Kōichi Sugiyama had filled out a consumer response card packaged in the back of ''Portopia'', and was quickly approached for the possibility of composing the music for the ambitious title. Accepting the challenge, Sugiyama meets with the team and begins his composition work, even going as far as to play the scores on his piano over the phone for group approval.

Actual scenario writing is a smooth process for the man, though he admits to requiring a long time to build up motivation to begin in the first place. From a general theme and setting the finer details of a game emerge, and from that point onwards more details are added until a complete picture is formed. Prior to {{DQ8}}, Horii would write every line of dialogue for his games, even down to nameless {{NPC}}s. This is why each title in the series feels familiar and consistent, even when separated by thirty years of hardware advancement.

*'''Favorite monsters:''' [[Slime]] and [[Barbatos]].

*'''Most hated dungeons:''' {{Galen}}'s grave in ''I'' and the [[Cave to Rendarak]] in {{II}}.

Horii has visited the United States twice to promote the North American releases of ''Dragon Quest''.  He appeared at the Nintendo World Store in New York City in 2010 for the release of {{DQ9}}, and again on February 12, 2011 at the Palo Alto, California GameStop for the ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine's_Day Valenslime]'' release of {{DQ6}}.

*On July 15th, 2017, a bronze statue depicting a slime, alongside the sword and shield of Erdrick, was built in Sumoto city of Hyogo prefecture to celebrate Horii as one of the city's finest sons.

*In {{DQ8}}, an infamous king slime is named [[Hori (Recruit)|Hori]], presumably after Yūji Horii.

*In [[Dragon Quest Treasures]] a [[King Slime]] named after and voiced by Yuji Horii himself can be recovered by entering the code YUB. This marks the first and only time where Yuji Horii’s voice is heard in the Dragon Quest series as well as his first and only voice role in any video game.

Chronotriggerteam.jpg|Yuji Horii, Akira Toriyama and Hironobu Sakaguchi.

Dreamteam3.jpg| The fabled Dream Team, consisting of Horii, Akira Toriyama, and Hiranobo Sakaguchi for ''Chrono trigger''

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