Princess Crown – Japanese exclusive and “foundation” of Vanillaware studio

Today we will talk about the exclusive Sega Saturn, which has never been beyond Japan. The game that has become the basis for the future studio Vanillaware. Meet – Princess Crown.

AND. Development

Princess Crown has a founding father – George Kamitani. With all my respect for this person, I must say that the “gate” nature led to the creation of Princess Crown. Initially, Kamitani and friends worked in a small Japanese studio where they made games for adults. Then his studio had a big chance – to offer his project to a large publisher represented by Sega. And George goes to meet with Sega. He wants to show them a game where the player will educate the princess and influence her development, while the game will have many endings. Yes, Kamitani wanted to make an analogue Princess Maker.

He begins the story of the game to representatives from the Sega, but he is directly interrupted at one question at the beginning: “Will it be a large -scale role -playing game? And then you know, we are trying to compete with Sony and their PlayStation … There are a lot of role -playing games on their console, this genre is popular, it would be cool to see a large RPG on our Sega Saturn ”. George understands that if he says now: “No, you know, this is just a princess simulator, an analogue of Princess Maker,” it will be the end. They will say “thank you” and the meeting will end there. He decides to lie and says: “Yes, it will be a role -playing game. We count on a large RPG for about 40 hours “.

The project is approved, Kamitani returns to comrades, and in 1995, work on a completely new concept begins in this unknown small studio. Naturally, the development of a large role -playing game requires completely different efforts, so everything goes not according to plan. So out of plan that the developer studio went bankrupt, and George and friends are without work. He is looking for salvation from SEGA and asks them for direct funding, but they refuse him because of his own problems-the Sega is cracking at the seams due to competition with Sony, and there Nintendo releases its Nintendo 64 console.

Then Kamitani agrees to the help of a friend, and he transfers the project to the studio Atlus. Atlus agrees to hire Kamitani and give him the opportunity to finish Princess Crown, the publisher and developer will be considered Atlus. George’s unborn brainchild is saved, and this act by ATLUS will determine Kamitani’s attitude to the studio for a long decade.

Huge efforts are made to develop, Atlus distinguishes Tanaku, one of the best managers of his studio, Shigoo Komory, screenwriter and designer of the Shin Megami Tensei and Etrian Odyssey, and one of the game composers was Toshika Tanaka, working on the Metal Slug series.

Kamitani himself describes a new concept as “combination of Dragon Quest and“ Alice in Wonderland ””. For George, it was important that the main character was a young girl, and in the future it would become a visiting card of Kamitani.

Sega Saturn did not allow to reveal all the ambitions of the studio. 3D graphics refused in favor of 2D that George will also adopt. And since there is no three -dimensional, then 2D had to be done beautifully. Therefore, great attention was paid to sprites and animations of characters. Moreover, either for the sake of the SEGA compliment, or this is really so, but Kamitani praised Saturn. Allegedly, the hardware of the console made it possible to make 2D-animations smoothly than on the PlayStation.

The development process of George describes as “chaos”, and when the game really reached the release, he was sincerely surprised. Despite all the problems, Kamitani fulfilled this Sega promise and made a role -playing game for 40 hours. At the suga saturn, in 1997, Princess Crown really went out.

Princess Crown is an amazing thing, and shows it from the start. The start of the game was made in the form of a scene, where the granddaughter asks her grandmother to read her fairy tale, for which the player literally needs to take a book and give her grandmother to start a story. You can also give a cat’s grandmother – this is how modest settings of the game are implemented, where only the sound is regulated (stereo or mono) and the speed of the text of the text.

The book that the grandmother will read is called – “The Crown of the Princess”.

AND. Plot

25 years ago in the Kingdom of Valendia, Queen Elfaran repelled the attack of demons who came for royal blood. After the same 25 years, the queen becomes a 13-year-old girl named Gradriel, queen’s daughter. Gradriel’s mother died during childbirth, the girl was brought up by the court magician and the head of the royal knights. In general, Gradriel has two older sisters, but one of the health has a problem, and the second is also for some reason that is trade-detention … In short, they dumped everything on a small.

The girl listened to the kingdom on the first working day and did not understand how she could solve something, not knowing the situation from the inside. This leads her to the idea of ​​a night escape in order to personally feel life in Valendia and help not by royal decree, but by action, as a simple person.

Already at the exit from the castle she is met by the fairy of Arya, with whom one of the petitions of local residents was associated. Allegedly fairies abducted children in the village, but, as Gradriel found out with Arya, the kidnapper was a student of the witch Pristerpin. After a small amount of violence, the witch understands that kidnapping children for testing spells is not very good and leaves.

The problem of the next settlement is more serious, because it is associated with dragons. One Gradriel would not have managed there and, fortunately for her, a talented fighter Edward Gloustar turns out to be nearby. Edward’s father served under Gradriel’s mother, but the people call him a “demon”. Allegedly he succumbed to the influence of demonic forces and turned out to be an apostate. The son is trying to atone for the sins of his father and find out the truth, because his mother says that his father was an excellent knight. Edward, by the way, does not understand that in front of him is the princess, since Gradriel travels like a simple girl. And the fact that our character goes in armor and crown is a game convention, the characters of the crown do not notice.

Gradriel helps local residents be saved and even kills one dragon, after which it goes on. They show us that trouble is taking place in the castle at this time. Eliel’s older sister accidentally finds a secret passage to the dungeon, where a book named Lalva or Larva is chained. It seems to be LARVA with a beam p in English means “larva”, so let it be Larva. In general, the book says to the sister: “Come on, in a part, free, and I will be a magical forces of the disease, you will become a cool princess and you can help your little Korolev sister”. Eliel agrees on which the scene ends.

Gradriel in the next settlement helps twice. First saves grazing goats from vile goblins, then saves the same unicorn from them. In the appendage, the unicorn asks to save his cub from the clutches of the red -haired witch. True, the witch dumps, and the spider fights instead, but it is easier.

The princess has a couple of stops left. One of them is an extinct village where a basilisk turned all people into stone. A wizard named Lyon was already trying to save the village, but he could not, but he knows how to speak from a stone state and tells the life hack. Go to the village of Goblin and buy a spell of immunity for the ray of a basilisk. The victory over the Basil liberates the inhabitants from petrification, and Gradriel goes to help further, to the largest settlement of the kingdom.

There is a real detective story: on the surface a simple contract for the murder of a siren. Supposedly the creature has gone crazy and attacks people. In practice, everything is much more complicated. There are no eyewitnesses of attacks, Siren herself sits in her cave and cries, and she is guarded by Edward Gloustar. It turns out that someone specially spreads rumors in the city in order to poison the life of the sirens. The tears of despair sirens turn into precious stones, and they serve as the goal of an attacker. Gradriel comes first to small dealers from the organized crime group, and they hand over the customer. To surprise, the customer is described as a “sexy witch with red pigtails”. We go to the already familiar lady and see a similar picture – the servant is fighting for her, and she dumps.

We can deal with the last petition Casinosnotongamcare.co.uk – the attack of the pirates in the waters of the kingdom. There Gradriel meets a harsh guy Portgas. But he does not terrorize peaceful ships, but a fat old man with a hook instead of a hand, posing as a portgas. Portgas himself was a Robin-guide from the world of pirates and has long moved away from business. Now passes itself as a simple sailor. A wooden leg hides behind long pants and high boots, and a parrot on the shoulder on vacation. But when we find the impostor, Portgas reveals the truth to us.

Having resolved the last situation, Gradriel goes home and finds out there about the loss of sister. She is kept in the tower where the demonic print is located, and demand that the young queen come there alone. True, at the entrance we will still meet the wizard Lyon, but we go to the meeting with the villain alone. The villain will be a villain – yes, that very red witch.

The very witch with animated breasts will turn out to be a sister under the influence of Larva’s book. Larva is very eager to reveal the demonic seal and fill the kingdom of Valendy with demons, for which the blood of the princess is needed. In the battle with his sister, this blood spils, and the demons come to the world, although the sister managed to save the influence of Larva. And while we jump from the tower to the castle, there are already full of devilish abstracts. Demons steal Soreel – the second older sister. And when protecting the castle, Golgof dies – Edward’s father. Although he lived in exile, he always followed the castle to help in difficult times. And at the first appearance of demons, he came to defense.

Now Gradriel wants to get into the world of demons in order to save his sister. The entrance to the demonic world is hidden on a distant island, where you can’t get without a ship. But if you fulfill a mini-zero and kill the demon, because of which the sailor from the Portgas team suffered, then we will have something to swim. Unfortunately, for a 13-year-old girl, the idea to swim alone on the island where the path to the world of demons is hidden, it turned out to be bad. Edward was already fighting at the entrance, who also looked for the way to the demons in order to take revenge on his father, and he is now dying in the battle. Gradriel would also die, but a unicorn saves it and transfer it to Valendia, away from the demons.

Gradriel is not satisfied with such a layout of events, and she is looking for the way to return to the life of Edward. The unicorn advises to turn to another magical creature – the Dragon Heindel. Although heimdall will probably be more correct, because the dragon, like the Scandinavian god, can foresee the future, and his knowledge is almost limitless. Heimdall answers the questions not for free and asks him to find a magical sphere in the kingdom of gnomes. We help the dwarves kill the monster in the mine and take the stone. Alas, there is nothing more to do there. Except to ride on trolleys with gnomes.

Heimdall talks about the demon of Shadow that lives in another tower. Shadow has a magic stone giving power over time and space. He just does not want to give it away, and after his defeat in battle sends Gradriel to the past, 25 years ago. Right on the day the mother of Gradriel defended the castle from the demons. We help the mother to recapture the castle, and at the same time we learn that Golgotha ​​was not any demon. Kwin, a knight that raised us and taught us to handle a sword initially collided with the book of Larva. And Golgotha ​​rushed under the blow of Larva to save Kwain, and accidentally fell under the influence of the book. As a result, we kill one of the demons, and the stone that was with Shadow falls from it. We communicate a little with her mother, because she died during childbirth and Gradriel for the first time sees her not in the paintings, and activate the stone to return at one time and save Edward.

Everything can be successfully crank up: Edward and sister Sidrael is saved. I had to beat the demons for the sake of this king, and this is not particularly happy about the sister. In general, Sorele was alive only because the demon treated her as a friend, if not more. He told her that he himself was a man and many centuries ago was cursed by a book. So he became the first and main demon, but somewhere in the depths of consciousness he remained a man. Therefore, after we defeated him and saved Sderel, his sister asks to help the demon, and Gradriel was so full that he is ready to do this.

She again goes to the tower, where the entrance to the world of demons is sealed, but meets the magician Lyon. Now he is under the influence of Larva and, apparently due to the fact that he was originally a magician, and magic in the world of the game is considered demonic force, he became much better puppet than sister Eliel or Knight of Calvary 25 years ago. Lyon says that Larva is not just a book, but a dark deity. And to get his best, he needs Coronel Crown. There is a second crown in the neighboring kingdom of the Volga. And with their help, Larva will be able to get out of imprisonment and immerse the world into darkness. Lyon follows the Crown of the Volga, and with Gradriel leaves his ward necro-samanta-another animated-breasted reminder that George Kamitani was working on adult games. We win her and try to save the Volga King.

By the way, the King of the Volga is Grandriel Grandfather. His son, that is, Batya Gradriel, fell in love with the Queen of Valendia, because of which he quarreled with his father. Grandfather Valendia did not like, perhaps because women have long ruled there. He did not make a decision of his son, he never saw his granddaughter and was not interested in her life. Now the granddaughter saves his grandfather, and he realized the mistake. Again restores diplomatic relations with Valendia, recognizes the family, but only Lyon still stole the crown. Moreover, it was exactly what he stole-dark feelings woke up in Gradrieli and overwhelmed her, because of which the dark BDSM-SUBSCIPE. Lyon pressed his tail and ran away, for he knew that he would not master this fight. But Gradriel defeats the darkness inside himself and accepts it. From this moment on, Madame-Gradriel is available as a new power of a girl and you can turn into it for a while.

This would be all over, but Lyon makes the last attempt to seize the second crown. Edward, Portgas, the queen, protect the court knights and magicians, come to the castle, grandfather with their warriors arrives, but everything is in vain. Lyon turns their petition spell (I remind you that it was he who told Gradriel, where to get the immunity spell) and comes to the queen. True, he doesn’t succeed, but the four -handed demonic god Larva himself goes into battle. Gradriel defeats him inside the demonic world, returns to his world, spaces his grief defenders and decides not to tell them that she defeated the main evil.

The book ends on this, but 4 more appears. One of them is the story-filler about the sorceress of Proserpine. Her story literally lies in the two-hour submission. Grandmother-Vedim promises her a potion of growing up. Allegedly, adult Proserpin will become powerfully conjuring. But for this you need to collect a bunch of everything on the map and bring the grandmother. After the collection, the witch drinks the potion, becomes a kind of analogue of the evil version of his sister Eliel, that is, a sexy witch in red, but when Proserpina goes to take revenge of Gradriel for failure with children, he only lures her boobs and says that he will now stiffen. The action of the potion ends on this, like the history of the witch.

But the stories of Edward and Portgas lead to a real ending of the game. Playing for Edward, we will see the same moments where we met him for Gradriel: a fight with dragons, the protection of the siren and the final battle with the demons, where Edward receives his father’s sword. Holgof sealed the entrance to the world of demons 25 years ago with this sword. The main thing here – Edward also went to Hayimdalon for answers and gave the sake of his question a magical sphere. This sphere was at the Black Dragon, who had to be killed for her. The question was the truth about the father that we have already seen when playing Gradriel.

Portgas in its history also goes to Heimdal. His scenario is the shortest – we are in advance, even before meeting with the dragon, we are looking for a magic stone, we get it and go to ask. Portgas’s question is connected with his deceased bride. A few years ago, he had to marry and live a family life, but Demon Schedou killed his bride and made her soul inside himself. We just need to find Shadow and take revenge, after which the bride’s soul will be freed.

The final book tells why heimdalim stones. If Larva was sealed in a demonic book, then its opposite, the goddess of Light Gaia, divided its strength into 4 parts. Each particle was inside one of the dragons and waited for the goddess to pick up the strength. Heimdall specially collected all the stones to arouse the goddess, but he could not kill himself. Therefore, he came to Gradriel, told her the story of gay and demanded a battle. Gradriel wins, Heimdall fulfills its purpose, and everyone lives happily.

The Fairy Arya tells this story to children, among whom the girl Tabita, whom Proserpina at the beginning turned into an animal. Tabita wrote down the story of Arya in the book and read it to her granddaughter. Now this granddaughter herself has become a grandmother and reads the book to the next generation.

AND. Gameplay and so on

Gameplaino Princess Crown is closely related to the experience of George Kamitani. And he worked on 2D fighting wagins, and when the Princess Crown was planned as an analogue of Princess Maker, there was an idea of ​​making a warhead combat training in the form of fighting. As a result, the battles in Princess Crown are 1 on 1, just like in fighting. There was simply no other option, since Kamitani did not work with the RPG genre and make his Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, with a classic combat system for Jrpg, he could not because Princess Crown was too important to try to study on step -by -step battles on it.

The Princess Crown combat system is felt unusual: the dynamics are far from full -fledged fighting, but it is compensated by role -playing elements. The heroine has a strip of endurance, a camp bag and one slot for equipment. With endurance, everything is simple: the larger the strip, the more you can make the combo.

There is a strong blow – he spends almost half of the endurance, and if you make an enhanced blow at the end of the strip, then you open for a blow, since the character is suffocating. Standing endurance is restored in place or objects from inventory. Mechanics are controversial and in places cost me life, but then makes you be more attentive. With the inventory is more difficult and much more interesting.

I specifically share a bag with active items and equipment, as they affect the gameplay in different ways. The equipment can influence both passively and actively, since you can equip a magic shield, and then blocking the blow will not only reduce the damage, but also inflict fiery, icy or simply response from due to spikes on the shield. If you get too much damage, then the equipment breaks and disappears, but you can find the amplification spell, then the equipment will fall instead of the breakdown, and it can be selected.

But objects from the bag are used only actively, and the variety is incredible: from the potions of attacks, protection and temporary immortality to 6 types of magic stones, 14 scrolls with spells, as well as any little things like throwing knives and axes a la Castlevania.

By the way, magic stones beat with different elements and each enemy has its weaknesses: the fiery dragon is weak to the magic of ice, the zombie burns well, and the petrification criticizes the ghost. Only one bag with eight items is available in the battle, but there may still be up to three bags in stock. Outside the battle, they can be changed in places in its entirety or simply shifting objects among themselves. In the battle, the bag is used that is worn at the time of the start of the fight.

The impact button, in fact, is only one. It can be clamped for a strong attack, combined with buttons of movement, but still arsenal of physical attacks, to put it mildly, extremely limited.

Experience is accrued for each battle. The higher the level of the heroine, the more health and stronger the attack. The enemies have the same system – if the enemy has a high level, then his blows are more dangerous and he is not deprived of health. But they will also give experience for victory over a high -level reptile at times more, so it is better than a dozen times to peel low -level mobs.

By the way, the battles are made in a classic Japanese style. That is, you go according to the location in order to go from one settlement to another, and come across random battles, as in all the rest Jrpg. And now, on the one hand, the local fighting is more dynamic and faster than in the JRPG classic. On the other hand, when there are hundreds of these battles, since the game is 40 hours, it is already somewhere in the 101st battle of the eye still jerks.

And if you can sometimes escape in the conditional “finale” from the battlefield, then in Princess Crown there are no place and you need to fight until the end. Victorious, or not very. In case of defeat, the game ends and throws us to the starting screen with a grandmother and a book. Here, the grant of granted the book leads to the download menu.

The preservation is made in the hotel, or atmospheric will be called this inn. You can survive for free, but you can also completely recover in front of 30 gold in front. Typically, taverns and inns are located in the same building, but there are settlements, where there is no tavern, or there is no hotel. Tavern is needed for food: you can buy it here for money or ask the innkeeper to prepare what you have with you. Food is needed to restore health. Cooking is not free, but still cheaper than buying cooked food.

There is a third cooking option. Knock out the meat from the monster, knock out a frying pan from another monster, and from the third, seasonings (You can’t cook without them). Then you can do it right in nature to eat and save, but you have to cllate the inventory for this with whole three objects. Given that at the end of the game the heroine will have a lot of money – buying food, no matter how ironic it sounds, it turns out to be more profitable.

Things from monsters fall out both after victory, in the form of a chest, and by chance after some strokes in battle. And after victory, you are shown a list that a mob may fall from a mob. For the main plot, this is not very important, but in the script for Proserpin you need to beat some mobs 10 times so that the desired ingredient falls. But this is a separate, clinical, case and specifically this element of the game – the Shiza is complete. Two to three hours, collect all garbage for the scene where a little girl becomes a sex-a-axle and lures her chest in front of a 13-year-old princess ..

It is also worth mentioning that in Princess Crown you can grow trees from seeds, and fruits that can be eaten and restore hp from trees. Less CP than hot food from a tavern, but for free. The mechanics work strange, because you can plant a seed only in battle. But the sprout does not require any additional attention. Unless, you have to be in time to collect. The fact is that any thing on earth after a few seconds is stolen by the most vile creatures in the game.

This is not a wizard Lyon, not the author of the script for Proserpin and not even the demonic god Larva. These are goblins. These vile creatures will forever take away the falling thing if you did not have time to choose. They don’t care that there is a battle and the enemy froze or turned you to stone – your problem.

Everything is aggravated by the fact that the goblins are found as enemies, and one of their attacks is to grab the unfortunate girl and pull out half of the inventory from her. It’s just a disgusting meanness! Indeed, in an active bag, especially before the expected fight with a dangerous enemy, you have to wear the most necessary things. And this little rubbish shakes your pockets, and you do not have time to pick up everything and lose a powerful Helk, a steep spell or even an element of equipment! How did you want to come to the settlement and cut out every ugly creature, but there is no such opportunity.

By the way, about small, but not creatures. Fairy Arya – quite a member of the battle. True, she shows herself automatically and extremely rarely. Mainly in the moments when Gradriel receives a lot of damage. Then the fairy flies to combat duty and blows the enemy so that we can get up and move away. Damage, unfortunately, it applies very little, but still helps. Like a certain mechanics of salvation from the enemy’s clamping in a corner in fighting. Arya is also an actual squire, because after every battle she takes a sword somewhere, and before the beginning, accordingly, brings him.

In addition to settlements and transitions between them, there are also dungeons and towers. The essence in them is one – these are a kind of labyrinths, where you need to get to the boss or the character needed by the plot. The final demonic tower threw me back in childhood, because there are full of destroyed corridors, where it was impossible to pass, so I had to draw a map of passage with the notes of dead ends, on which I already successfully rested.

In general, the scale of Princess Crown is amazing. Yes, she slides several times into a backing (apparently, because of the promise to make a large RPG for 40 hours), and when I was sent to a huge tower with dead ends for the second time, I was happy that I sketched a passage card. It would seem, why send again to the same locations? And when the same tower had to go for Edward … Well, this is already too much.

After all, there are side activities and optional locations. For example, you can help fairies with the protection of the Tree Iggdrasil – for this they give an additional bag for things. There is a dragon dungeon, also optional and gives additional awards. There are no familiar side quests, but a couple of new locations appear, and the old ones, as they move, offer new awards. In combination with a variety of things used from the inventory – it turns out in every sense a big game.

And when you understand that all this was done by authors who had no experience in RPG behind their backs, then you are already amazing here. Princess Crown has become a new look at the Japanese RPG genre. She offered something that no one had offered before, and it turned out thanks to the bluff of George Kamitani. His desire to make the game resulted in a truly unique game for 97. With an unusual presentation of the plot and an unusual gameplay woven from the experience of working with fightingley and transferring this experience to the RPG genre. The game was praised by the Japanese press, someone in the West already played Japanese at that time and was imbued with an incredible atmosphere of Princess Crown, and someone (Your humble servanteven now I received incredible pleasure from the game and felt really nostalgic feelings from passing.

But the game did not become financially successful, and it is softly said. Princess Crown – financial failure. There are two main reasons, and they are interconnected: long development and exclusivity. Sega Saturn at the end of 1997 (And Princess Crown was released in December) lost the console race. The first PlayStation console successfully won the market, the recently released Nintendo 64 gained popularity, and Saturn slowly went towards oblivion. George and the team with money were even more complicated, because the original studio of Mr. Kamitani went bankrupt, and the authors of Princess Crown had debts. But much more important is that people who worked on such an incredible project gained tremendous experience. Unfortunately, most of the authors scattered someone. But a couple of people formed a backbone, which will shoot many years later, which we will talk about.

Princess Crown has become a cult classic. IGN and 1UP publications recognized the game of one of the greatest 2D games in history, and you can’t argue with this. As part of the history of the gaming industry, as part of the development of Japanese role -playing games Princess Crown. However, familiarization with this element of history is breaking up about the language barrier. The game never went beyond Japan, although it was reprinted for PSP, and the PSP port was ported to PS4 as DLC for the game 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim.

There is no fan translation. There is a certain beta transmission into English, but there is no final version at the time of this exit. And I want to believe that in spite of me, who played in Japanese, the translation will still come out so that at least other players are lucky. The official lack of translation Kamitani explained the old age of the game in an interview with 2009, and the 1uP publication was complemented in the article that the original source code of the game was lost, so it is pointless to wait for the game in English.

However, the ideas of Princess Crown were continued. The continuation that has changed everything for Kamitani and which turned out to be much more accessible to the mass player. But about that – next time.