AliceSoft’s Rance series is now 33 year old, and to celebrate they’ve released the first two games on GOG.
Despite only being two years younger than the Final Fantasy series, the games always had a rough time being published in the west. Rance 01+ 02 (modern visual remakes of the first 2 games) got official translations by MangaGamer in 2020, years after their original release.
GOG is now the series’ second home alongside MangaGamer. The series never saw a Steam release, with Rance 5d and VI being outright rejected by the online distributor for undisclosed reasons.
AliceSoft is known for publishing Evenicle, House in Fata Morgana, and the Higurashi When They Cry series in the west with the help of MangaGamer, cementing themselves as some of the biggest names when it comes to bringing visual novels to the west.
Rance boasts the title of being the longest-running erotic video game series in history, with the first game originally released for the PC-8800 and PC-9800 series of computers back in 1989.
The series is also known for inspiring the Mushoku Tensei light novels and anime, which greatly capture the tongue-in-cheek nature that Rance has without interfering on its more serious moments.
Despite having 17 games the series is still relatively unknown outside of its niche internet fanbase, so hopefully being on a platform as big as GOG will expose the series to a bigger audience.