Riverhill Soft Inc.

History

Riverhill Soft was a Fukuoka-based game developer founded in August 1982 but was not fully established as a corporation until May 6, 1983 [3]. Started by Kazuhiro Okazaki and Rika Suzuki, the company began as a PC developer where all of their games were published and advertised by Union Planning. In 1986, Riverhill began publishing games under their own name and soon became famous for creating adventure games like J.B. Harold Murder Club and RPGs like Burai [2]. Over time the company branched out into the home console market and became known for creating titles like Doctor Hauzer, Overblood, and Refrain Love. They also published various Western developed games in Japan.

In 2004, Riverhill Soft dissolved and many of the company's employees splintered off to create their own companies in the years preceding Riverhill's bankruptcy. These include:

• Level-5 established in 1998 by Akihiro Hino.
• Cing co-founded by Rika Suzuki and Takuya Miyagawa in 1999.
• Falstaff formed by the Refrain Love development team in 2000.
• Althi in 2000 was created by Yoshihiko Miyazaki who eventually took ownership of several Riverhill Soft IPs after their closing.
• Kazuhiro Okazaki became president of Tetris Online Japan, Inc.

References

1. River Hill Software, which focused on ADVs, and SSK Office Computer, a Valuable Software House in Shikoku (Akiba PC Watch, 2019).
2. Small Profile on Rika Suzuki (Game Preservation Society, 2022).
3. Riverhill Soft Official Corporate Profile