I’ve always been a huge fighting game fan. I cut my teeth on Streefighter 2 for the SNES and later moved on to games like King of Fighters (98′ was the best) and Guilty Gear. Good fighting games were getting harder to come by after the Arcades all disappeared in the 1990’s. In the late 2000’s Fighting Games started to make a come back. Marvel Vs Capcom 2 got re-released, Street Fighter 4 came out, Guilty Gear spawned Blazeblue, and many others followed.
Being an avid Anime and Japanese fighting game fan, I stumbled upon a post about a free ware game called Vanguard Princess. It was all in Japanese (not that big of a deal for a fighting game) and in order to play Windows had be set to allow ‘non-english source code’ to be executed. I did the complicated steps needed to play the game and it was totally worth it. The game played a bit like King of Fighters/ Marvel VS Capcom games in that you have your primary character as well as a support character in a high paced environment. The game had nice looking ‘hand drawn’ sprite art, similar to Arcana Heart. The game puts you in control of a primary character as well as a support character (much like a Striker from KOF or assist in MvsC). Vanguard Princess had crazy combos, awesome characters, and addictive gameplay. I loved the game but, I had a feeling that the game would never see the light of day for a full US release. Wrong.
About 4 years after its initial release a eigoMANGA properly released the game via Amazon games. Since then, the game has migrated over to Steam where it can be enjoyed by a much wider audience. I have loved Vanguard Princess the first time I booted up up back in 2009 and I jumped as soon as I could to pick the game up with its proper release. eigoMANGA has done an excellent job supporting the title. A new character and Director’s Cut addon was released earlier this month via DLC from Steam.
If you love Japanese style fighting games, King of Fighters, or are just looking for a unique fighting game to play, check out Vanguard Princess.
eigoMANGA will also be showing off Vanguard Princess at San Diego Comic-con this year in the form of a tournament! If you are attending comic-con checkout check out the information below and see Vanguard Princess in action!
eigoMANGA’s Booth Events (#5532):
Vanguard Princess Open Gaming And Daily Tournament – Thursday through Sunday, July, 24 – July 27 at 12:00pm – 3:00pm
