The Illusion of Enix

[MephistoZX]

Recently, I felt the urge to play EVO again, for the SNES. I then thought back nostalgically to the glory days of the publisher of the game, Enix. Many people say Squaresoft ruled the RPG landscape back in the days, which I can totally understand and to a point, and even agree. However, for me, Enix was the company that I cherished the most. When you think of Enix, you think of amazing games like Dragon Quest, EVO, Brain Lord, Act Raiser, the Soul Blazer trilogy, and Ogre Battle. After doing some digging around, I realized something I had never noticed before about them: they have never internally developed a video game. See the following list of notable SNES games they published.


Game  /                                             Developer
ActRaiser                                                 - Quintet
ActRaiser 2                                              - Quintet
Soul Blazer                                              - Quintet
Illusion of Gaia                                    - Quintet
E.V.O.: Search for Eden                           -  Almanic
The 7th Saga                                 -  Produce
Paladin's Quest                                       -  Copya System
Brain Lord                                      -  Produce
Robotrek                                          -  Quintet, Ancient
Ogre Battle                                             -  Quest
Terranigma                                             -  Quintet
Dark Half                                             -   WestOne Bit Entertainment
Dragon Warrior I & II                             -   Chunsoft
Dragon Quest III: And Into the Legend -  Heartbeat
Dragon Quest V: Tenkū no Hanayome -  Chunsoft
Dragon Quest VI: Maboroshi no Daichi -  Heartbeat
Lennus 2                                              -  Copya Systems
Mystic Ark                               -   Produce
Star Ocean                           -   tri-Ace
Wonder Project J                              - Almanic

Each and every one of these games were developed by a third party, and published by Enix. It's a bit deflating to my 12 year old self to realize this giant name that you've held in high regard for so long really didn't create this games which changed your life. Regardless of all that, I think it would be interesting to look at some of these names behind Enix and see where they are now and their contributions to gaming history.

Almanic/Girvo


Almanic was founded in 1991 by a former Technos (Double Dragon) and Enix employee. The first game they created was 46 Okunen Monogatari (translates to 4.6 Billion Year Story) for the PC-98. This game was basically the first version of EVO (see image above), which Almanic and Enix edited and transitioned into the SNES with improved graphics and gameplay. EVO was one of the more unique SNES games in which you are tasked on being an organism traversing through history evolving yourself to stay alive as you go. Later, Sony would to some degree take this base concept of this for the PS3 game Tokyo Jungle. Almanic also created games such as Wonder Project J, Cosmic Carnage for the 32X, and Mazin Saga for Genesis. Almanic changed its name to Girvo in 1995 and released a few more Japan Only games. In 1997 the company dissolved. The employees are scattered, but some are thought to be absorbed back into Enix.


Copya System


Try as I might, I cannot get much information on Copya systems. They seem like a low budget developer that has worked on NES, SNES, GB, and 3DO games. They created Paladin's Quest (known as Lennus in Japan) and Enix published it Japan and later in North America in 1992. They also worked on games such as Popeye 2 for GB, Air Diver for the NES, and Super Air Diver for the SNES. The last game they released was Lennus 2 in 1996 as the followup to the original Lennus (Paladin's Quest). Interestingly, the Playstation and N64 had already been out in Japan for a while, so it seems like they incubated and worked on Lennus 2 for quite some time. If I find out more information on this developer, I will update this in the future.

Produce


Produce is one of those companies that truly prospered in the age of the SNES and disappeared completely afterward. It was founded in 1990 by former Irem employees, and had its hand in several different genres. It worked with Enix on several SNES RPGs including the 7th Saga, Mystic Ark (7th Saga 2), and Brain Lord (personal favorite of mine). They also had a good relationship with Hudson and released games including Super Bomberman 1, 2, and 4, and Super Adventure Island. It's not entirely known what happened to Produce, but everything I read hints at it being dissolved and some employees retained in Enix. The final game made by Produce was the N64 Fighting game Dual Heroes, which was widely panned by just about everyone.

Quintet


Ah, Quintet. Possibly the most depressing Japanese company to go into the sunset (outside of modern day Konami). Quintet was founded in 1989, and its name was a play on what the developers believed to be the five main elements of game design: planning, graphics, sound, programmers and producers. The president of Quintet is Tomoyoshi Miyazaki, who was the scenario writer for the first three entries of the Ys series and left Falcom to join. Quintet developed some amazing Super Nintendo games including Actraiser, Actraiser 2, Robotrek, Illusion of Gaia, Soul Blazer, and Terranigma. Most of these games made their way west (although Terranigma only released in Europe) at some point, but it seems like Quintet struggled with adapting to newer technology. After the glory days of the SNES, some of the staff stayed on to work under another developer name called Shade, and they designed the Playstation game Granstream Saga. Some of the team also helped co-develop some late 1990s games including Planet Laika for Playstation and Godzilla Generations for Dreamcast. Quintet kept operating until around 2002 it is believed and eventually shut down their online forum. In 2008, the company's website itself shut down and well and the company is thought to be defunct and the members scattered. Some members later worked on other development teams including working on the PS2 game Orphen.

Quest


Quest was founded in 1988 and were originally called Bothtec. They developed the great Ogre Battle Series, which included Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen and Tactics Ogre:Let Us Cling Together which were published on the SNES by Enix. Later games in the series included Ogre Battle 64, Tactics Ogre Knight of Lodis for GBA, and Ogre Battle: Legend of the Zenobia Prince for Neo-geo Color. The series creator Yasumi Matsuno was a huge Queen fan, and that's why you see the several of the games subtitled with Queen songs ("March of the Black Queen" was a track Queen's Queen II, while "Let Us Cling Together" was part of the song Teo Torriatte(Let Us Cling Together) from A Day at the Races). Other notable quest games include Conquest of the Crystal Palace, Magical Chase, and Battle Ping Pong. Matsuno and many others left the company in 1995 to join Square and would later come to work on such titles as Final Fantasy Tactics. Quest would later completely dissolve into Square Enix in 2002.

Heartbeat



Heartbeat was a company founded around the SNES years and developed the Dragon Quest 3 remake and Dragon Quest 6 for SNES. Not much is known about this company, other than close ties to Enix and the Dragon Quest series. The company also developed Dragon Quest 7 for Playstation and the Dragon Quest 4 remake. Heartbeat later would dissolve and many of the members go on to form a company called Genius Society, which developed games on Nintendo platforms including Pokemon X D, Pokemon Coloseum, The Denpa Men series, and Dragon Quest Swords.

J-Force


J-Force was a game development studio established in 1990 by Masahiro Akishino, who was a director for another development team called Wolf Team. They worked on 3 other games total in addition to Burning Heroes (which Enix published), with one of those being the cult classic Strategy game Dragon Force. J-Force had a lot of financial problems and development delays due of taking too many projects simultaneously. During the development of Dragon Force in late 1994, Akishino went missing mysteriously and the company subsequently fell into bankruptcy. Dragon Force was completed in-house at Sega and most of the J-Force staff joined Idea Factory afterwards. Akishino's whereabouts remain unknown to this day. Wolf Team, Akishino's original team were the group behind starting the Tales of... Series.

Other companies that developed for Enix and still alive today, include Chunsoft (now Spike Chunsoft), and tri-ace. However, many of these companies came onto the scene and made some amazing games for Enix before eventually passing into gaming history as simply a name. I just wanted to give some of these companies a moment in the sun, so to speak, as we usually just see the Enix name behind these classic games. So a hearty thanks to all the developers mentioned, and to Enix themselves as well, for taking a chance on them.

Thanks for reading.

[Jason]

Ya know I noticed a lot of that same thing when I was doing all of our banners and stuff for the site. Quintet and Quest being, I think, my favorites of the group.

I know Quest kinda went into a stew with other groups like Atlus but I do wonder where some of the others are today... if they even exist. Tri-Ace I've got something of a love/hate relationship with (See Baten Kaitos/Star Ocean).

It's kinda sad to see things happening in the video game world that we see in the new media world. So few people control so much of what we are "allowed" to play. Thank god for indie developers that are doing new things.

A very interesting read. I enjoyed it very much.

   

[JadePharaoh]

I started noticing that too; there were a lot of great SNES games that I noticed were developed by Quintet, not Enix.

[Jason]

Actually I don't see Burning Heroes on the list... and as it's one you mentioned to me recently I wonder if you had any information there... was that a PURE enix title?

[MephistoZX]

Actually this might be the most interesting story of all. I will amend the top with this info too.

Burning Heroes was created by a company called J-Force. J-Force was a game development studio established in 1990 by Masahiro Akishino, who was a director for another development team called Wolf Team. They worked on 3 other games total in addition to Burning Heroes (which Enix published), with one of those being the cult classic Strategy game Dragon Force. J-Force had a lot of financial problems and development delays due of taking too many projects simultaneously. During the development of Dragon Force in late 1994, Akishino went missing mysteriously and the company subsequently fell into bankruptcy. Dragon Force was completed in-house at Sega and most of the J-Force staff joined Idea Factory afterwards. Akishino's whereabouts remain unknown to this day. Wolf Team, Akishino's original company were actually the group behind starting the Tales of... Series.

Small world.

[Jason]

I think I've heard the name "Wolf Team" somewhere before... and I think it was a sega "quick time" style arcade game maybe?

Maybe I've got my facts wrong... but yeah, that's really interesting. The dude's been missing for 22 years now? Wow.