However, most of the later engines were translated officially worldwide. The RPG Maker series was originally released primarily in Japan, but people started to translate and release the software illegally in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Russia, and North America with RPG Maker 2000 and RPG Maker 2003. The Japanese name, Tsukūru, is a pun mixing the Japanese word tsukuru (作る), means 'make' or 'create', with tsūru (ツール), the Japanese transcription of the English word 'tool'. RPG Maker, known in Japan as RPG Tsukūru ( RPGツクール, sometimes romanized as RPG Tkool), is a series of programs for the development of role-playing video games (RPGs) with story-driven elements, created by the Japanese group ASCII, succeeded by Enterbrain.