Random House

Not to be confused with the similarly-named American book publisher Random House. Random House Co., Ltd. (株式会社ランダムハウス) was established by programmer Kazuro Morita (森田和郎) on April 15, 1983 in Saitama, Japan after winning Enix's first game programming competition with Morita's Battle Field. Author and game designer Yuto Ramon (羅門祐人), alias Yuhei Yamaguchi (山口祐平) was also a founding member; Ramon left the company in 1986 to establish Artec. The company was unrelated to the American book publisher of the same name. Random House ceased operations in 1999, with all assets and staff being transferred to a new company called Yuki Enterprise. At this point, Morita stepped down as company head, though he continued working with Yuki Enterprise as a programmer. Morita was a devoted board game player, and was highly-ranked in Shogi, Go, and Othello. Fittingly, many of Random House's titles were digital versions of board games, often bearing Morita's name and featuring his own play algorithms; he even published a book about how to design such algorithms, including source code for his Othello game. He passed away in July 2012.