List of Enix home computer games

The Japanese company Enix was established as a publisher of home computer games in August 1982, after founder Yasuhiro Fukushima noticed how popular these were in the United States. Fukushima had no programming knowledge and did not employ internal programmers or game designers. Instead, he held a contest for programming hobbyists in order to pool talents and publish selected games, with a ¥1 million award for the top prize (US$5,000). Due to a lack of brand recognition and the unusually high award (several times more than other contests of the time), few entries were received in the first month; however, after a successful marketing campaign on television and in appliance stores, hobby clubs, and computer and manga magazines promising that the award was real, three hundred entries were received by the end of the "First Game Hobby Program Contest".

This contest allowed Enix to release numerous games with a wide variety of genres early on, as thirteen winning entries were polished and chosen for release in February 1983. Among these were Morita no Battle Field by Kazurou Morita; Door Door by Koichi Nakamura; and Love Match Tennis by Yuji Horii, a young columnist for Weekly Shōnen Jump. In addition to two more contests, Enix began recruiting developers on a project basis. For each project, Enix outsourced development and handled production and promotion duties, which made cost control more efficient. Unlike software houses of the time, Fukushima tried to instill a commercial mindset in his developers, as he thought games should be treated as books or movies in terms of copyright. He employed a royalty payment between the company and the developer, so that the latter would be compensated proportionally to the sales of their games. Each of Enix's home computer release featured a photo and resume of the developer on the back cover of the package.

Enix's home computer games were commercially successful; on their release, the first batch of February 1983 ranked first, second, third, fifth and seventh in the top ten Japanese best-selling games, leading to other game releases and a profit of ¥300 million (US$1.5 million) by the end of the year. Some of the most successful games were ported for the rising Famicom console market, starting with Door Door, which sold 200,000 copies, and The Portopia Serial Murder Case, which sold 700,000. Enix eventually focused on the console market, which became bigger than the home computer one. With the exception of the character designer Akira Toriyama, the development team of Enix's future flagship series Dragon Quest was recruited thanks to the company's programming contests: Horii and Nakamura had won the first contest, and Koichi Sugiyama was contacted after sending in a questionnaire postcard for Morita Kazurou no Shogi.

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