Honor presented for Horii’s cultural contributions to Japan through games
Dragon Quest series creator and game designer Yuji Horii reported on his X (formerly Twitter) account on Tuesday that the Commissioner for Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs has honored Horii for his cultural contributions to Japan through the Dragon Quest series and other titles.
名誉なことに文化庁長官から表彰していただきました。思えば40年ほど前、犯罪の原因にされたり、なにかと世間から目の敵にされたゲームですが、長い歳月を経て国から文化として認められるようになりました。感無量です。これからもゲーム業界をよろしくお願いしますね。 pic.twitter.com/GuhEaTrytx
— 堀井雄二 (@YujiHorii) December 17, 2024
In his message, Horii noted that games were once scapegoated for crimes and viewed with suspicion by the world four decades ago. Now, after so much time has passed, games have now become recognized as culture by the country.
Horii was born in 1954 in Hyogo, and he won a game programming contest from Enix in 1982. The first Dragon Quest game debuted in 1986. The collective Dragon Quest series has since sold over 83 million units worldwide. The series has become a common cultural touchstone in Japan, with its designs, monsters, and mechanics referenced and parodied in numerous works, and serving as the archetypal role-playing game in Japanese culture.
Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition launched for Switch in September 2019. The game launched on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam, the Epic Games Store, and the Microsoft Store in December 2020. The original game shipped in Japan for PS4 and Nintendo 3DS in July 2017.
Source: Yuji Horii‘s X/Twitter account
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