|
HISTORICAL DOCUMENTTHE ORIGINAL PRESS RELEASEADVENTIONS LICENSES PRINCESS MAKER 2 FROM ANIME PIONEERS GAINAX
Adventions is pleased to announce that they have signed a deal with the pioneering Japanese animation company Gainax to bring the best-selling computer game Princess Maker 2 to America. Gainax is already well known to American fans of Japanese animation through their animated works, but this is their first computer game to be released on these shores. An interesting twist on the familiar role-playing genre, Princess Maker 2 is a fantasy-simulation game where the player takes on the role of a valiant warrior whom the gods have given the task of raising a little girl from age 10 to her 18th birthday "We're very excited to have the opportunity to bring this great game to America," says Timon Trzepacz, programmer of the translated version. "Gainax has a reputation among fans for producing high-quality, innovative work, and this game is no exception. Right now we're looking for a distributor for the game. Otherwise, the game is ready to go. We're already talking with a number of potential distributors, and are currently looking for new contacts. We think that this game will be a big hit, and want to make sure the players get a quality product all the way. Players familiar with Gainax's earlier work won't be disappointed." In the game, players influence their daughter by sending her to school, to part-time jobs, on adventures, or on vacation. The girl's success or failure in her work and education is reflected in an animated window and in multiple statistics which rise and fall as her abilities change. The adventures allow the player to move their daughter through one of four different maps, fighting monsters and solving puzzles to gain money and improve her abilities. She will get to test these abilities at each year's harvest festival, where she can compete in contests against other characters in the game for prestige and money. Everything the player does causes changes in the daughter's statistics, raising some but often lowering others, resulting in a kind of karmic balancing act. Ultimately these traits will determine what career the daughter will choose in her adult life, and who (if anyone) she will marry. Not that marriage is the be-all, end-all of existence, as sometimes marriage is not the happiest ending. Unlike most Japanese games, Princess Maker 2 has a subtle feminist slant. While the player can choose stereotypical roles for their daughter, they can also work against stereotypes and make their daughters into lumberjacks, warriors or hunters. At the end of the game, players get a picture of their daughter working at her final profession and a letter from her describing her thoughts toward her father and her life. Not counting different marriages, the game has over seventy different ending professions. Trying to get them all should be enough to keep most players busy for a long, long time. "The game has nearly infinite replay value - it's very addictive," says Trzepacz. "You always want to go back and try something different and see if the ending your daughter gets has improved. You become very attached to your daughter." This will be the first Adventions game to be sold in retail stores. Previously, Adventions was most famous for their text-only adventure games, sold through shareware and direct channels. These include the popular Unnkulian Unventure series and The Horror of Rylvania. Adventions was founded in 1990 by David Leary and David Baggett, former University of Maryland students. Tokyo's Gainax is well-known among aficionados of Japanese animation through their stunning body of animation work, including Wings of Honneamise (which was recently theatrically released in English), Nadia of the Mysterious Seas, GunBuster, Black Magic M-66 and the animated mockumentary of fandom, Otaku no Video.
Princess Maker 2 and all images on this page copyright © 1996 Adventions, copyright © 1993 Gainax.
|  |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
