Born January 6, 1954 on Awaji Island, Japan

Horii is best known as the creator of Dragon Quest, the series that basically defined what console RPGs should look like—Nintendo Power has credited him with essentially writing the rulebook for the whole genre.

He studied literature at Waseda University and spent time as a freelance writer for magazines, newspapers, and comics before making the jump into games. What pushed him over the edge was placing in an Enix programming contest with a tennis game, which gave him enough confidence to pursue game design seriously.

Beyond Dragon Quest, his credits include The PORTOPIA Serial Murder Case and the Itadaki Street series. He also supervised Chrono Trigger on SNES, and the game's multiple endings even featured Horii and other dev staff in one of them—a fun bit of trivia fans still dig up.

Today he runs Armor Project, his own production company, which has an exclusive contract with Square Enix that dates back to his original deal with Enix before they merged with Square. He's currently working on Dragon Quest IX for the Nintendo DS, which marks the first mainline Dragon Quest game built primarily for a handheld rather than a home console.