, also known as ''Vanguard Princess: Senjin no Himegimi'' (ヴァンガードプリンセス先陣の姫君) is a Japanese

dōjin In Japan, a is a group of people who share an interest, activity, or hobby. The word is sometimes translated into English as " clique", "fandom", "coterie", "society", or "circle" (as in " sewing circle"). Self-published creative works pro ...

fighting game The fighting game video game genre, genre involves combat between multiple characters, often (but not limited to) one-on-one battles. Fighting game combat often features mechanics such as Blocking (martial arts), blocking, grappling, counter- ...

for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

. Developed by a single programmer and illustrator, Tomoaki Sugeno (nicknamed Suge9), the game was created using '' Fighter Maker 2nd'' and was released for PC on June 26, 2009, and April 10, 2013, for

OnLive OnLive was a provider of cloud computing, cloud X86 virtualization, virtualization technologies based in Mountain View, California. OnLive's flagship product was its cloud gaming service, which allowed subscribers to rent or demo video games, com ...

. The publishing rights for Vanguard Princess have been granted to exA-Arcadia as of 2024 by the Government of Japan's Agency of Cultural Affairs.

Gameplay

''Vanguard Princess'' is a 2D

featuring an all-female cast. The player selects both a fighter and a support character, who follows the fighter and can assist her.

Plot

A mysterious woman with supernatural powers (the game's boss) is captured by the government. Her powers are accidentally unleashed, bestowing various young women with magical powers.

Development and release

''Vanguard Princess'' was fully developed by Tomoaki Sugeno (or Suge9), an ex-

Capcom is a Japanese video game company. It has created a number of critically acclaimed and List of best-selling video game franchises, multi-million-selling game franchises, with its most commercially successful being ''Resident Evil'', ''Monster ...

sprite designer who worked in games like '' Resident Evil 3: Nemesis'' and made character sprites for '' The King of Fighters EX: Neo Blood''. Sugeno uses ''Fighter Maker 2nd'' for his work, a popular graphic engine for Windows by

ASCII ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...

. Sugeno designed and illustrated the game by himself, but the music was taken from "nash music library", a royalty-free library of songs. Sugeno also used

voice actors Voice acting is the art of Acting, performing a character or providing information to an audience with one's voice. Performers are often called voice actors/actresses in addition to other names. Examples of voice work include animation, animated, ...

to record the voices for all the characters. Sugeno planned a future update called ''Vanguard Princess Prime'' which would introduce a new character named Rikako but has since ceased development on it. An English version was released by

eigoMANGA eigoMANGA is a comic book publishing company that produces original Japanese-influenced comics and digital media. eigoMANGA has been underway since its conception in 2000. The company is based in San Francisco, California. History eigoMANGA ...

in February 2013 on

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc., doing business as Amazon, is an American multinational technology company engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevu ...

to North America and Europe. The following month, they released a cloud version of the game on the

Onlive OnLive was a provider of cloud computing, cloud X86 virtualization, virtualization technologies based in Mountain View, California. OnLive's flagship product was its cloud gaming service, which allowed subscribers to rent or demo video games, com ...

game service. A notable difference in the English version is that the game edits the explicit content in the original Japanese version. The English version also unlocks Hilda as a playable support character. A downloadable PC version of the game was released via

Steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

on March 3, 2014, after being Greenlit by the community. This version comes with the original English release, plus a free, optional ''Director's Cut'' add-on, which returns previously removed content to the game. At

Evo Japan The Evolution Championship Series, commonly known as Evo, is an American annual esports event that focuses exclusively on fighting games. The tournaments are completely open and use the double elimination format. As with Super Battle Opera, con ...

2024, exA-Arcadia announced an updated arcade version called ''Vanguard Princess R''. The publishing rights for Vanguard Princess have been granted to exA-Arcadia as of 2024 by the Government of Japan's Agency of Cultural Affairs.

Reception

After the official release, ''Vanguard Princess'' was initially picked up on by video game websites such as Daiken,

Kotaku ''Kotaku'' is a video game website and blog that was originally launched in 2004 as part of the Gawker Media network. Notable former contributors to the site include Luke Smith, Cecilia D'Anastasio, Tim Rogers, and Jason Schreier. History ...

and ''Siliconera'', and later by ''

Famitsu , formerly , is a line of Japanese Video game journalism, video game magazines published by Kadokawa Game Linkage (previously known as Gzbrain), a subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, Kadokawa. ''Famitsu'' is published in both weekly and monthly f ...

'' and ''IT+Media''.

References

External links

Government of Japan Vanguard Princess Rights Ruling Case 779-000001

Official website

Official website

''Vanguard Princess'' wiki
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130315160243/http://wiki.mizuumi.net/w/Vanguard_Princess , date=2013-03-15 2009 video games Doujin video games Fighting games Freeware games Multiplayer and single-player video games Video games developed in Japan Video games featuring female protagonists Windows games