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 to branch into real estate management. Beginning in 1982, Enix began publishing video games. Three notable early collaborators were designers Yuji Horii and Koichi Nakamura, and composer Koichi Sugiyama. Horii, Nakamura and Sugiyama would all work on the 1986 role playing video game (RPG) Dragon Quest for the Family Computer; one of the earliest successful RPGs for consoles, it spawned a franchise of the same name which remains Enix's best-known product. They would gain notoriety as a publisher for several studios and their properties including tri-Ace, Tose, Chunsoft and Quintet. It also founded the Gangan Comics imprint family, and created international subsidiaries or partnerships related to technology development, publishing and education. In the early 2000s, due to rising game development costs, Enix entered discussions about merging with Square, a rival company known for the Final Fantasy franchise. The merger eventually went ahead in 2003 forming Square Enix, with Enix as the surviving corporate entity. Enix was founded under the name Eidansha Boshu Service Center on September 22, 1975 by Yasuhiro Fukushima. An architect-turned-business entrepreneur, Fukushima initially founded Eidansha as a publishing company focused on advertising tabloids for real estate. On February 5, 1980, Eidansha Boshu created a wholly owned subsidiary Eidansya Fudousan for the purpose of specializing in real estate trading and brokerage, being renamed Eidansha Systems the following year. It was based in Shinjuku, Tokyo. During 1982 Eidansha Boshu made an unsuccessful attempt to become a nationwide chain. Fukushima decided to invest his capital into the emerging video game market; during this period on August 30, Eidansya Fudousan was renamed Enix Corporation.