- French-Bread
:"For the food dish, see French bread."nihongo|Soft Circle French-Bread|フランスパン|Furansupan|known as Watanabe Seisakujo prior to
2003 is adojin soft company that specializes in2D fighting game s. They have worked particularly closely withTYPE-MOON , a former dojin soft company themselves, to turn TYPE-MOON'svisual novel series "Tsukihime " into the "Melty Blood " series of fighting games. One of their current games, the scrolling brawler "Ragnarok Battle Offline ", ahomage /spoof of theMMORPG "Ragnarok Online " so impressedGravity Corp. (the original game's designers) that it has been given an official release outside ofJapan .It is believed that the name change was to prevent confusion with
multimedia companyWatanabe Productions .Their games include:
*TheMelty Blood series of2D fighting game s based onTsukihime
*The Queen of Heart series of2D fighting game s
*"Glove on Fight ": another2D fighting game
*"Ragnarok Battle Offline ": a scrolling brawler based onRagnarok Online
*"Bike Banditz ": Ashmup
*"Rosa Chinensis Four Hand ": a curtain fireshmup based on "Maria-sama ga Miteru "
*"": a scrolling brawler/shmup based on "Maria-sama ga Miteru "
*"Drill Milky Punch ": a multi directionalfighting game based on "Muv-Luv "
*"Air Fli ": a "Flicky " clone based on "Air"
*"Demon Hunter Mai " (2000): a scrolling brawler based on "Kanon "Criticism
Prior to their current identity as French-Bread, they became notable for disallowing content from their games to be used for other game engines, such as
M.U.G.E.N and Knuckle Fighter X. One of the games they tried to protect is their Queen of Heart series, starting from "QOH98" to "Party's Breaker". While it is understood that this was done to protect their intellectual products such as sprites, this also made them a subject of heavy criticism, due the fact that the character sprites they made are also based on copyrighted characters, and that they heavily borrow resources such as sounds from other existing games, and package the result as their own dōjin product. Critics argue that they have no right to restrict usage of their resources when they themselves borrow materials. Fact|date=June 2008This changed however, when they teamed up with
TYPE-MOON to produce "Melty Blood ". Initially, they asked that sounds and voices not be used in conversions to game engines, but in later releases, beginning in "Melty Blood Re-ACT", no such restrictions were enforced anymore. It is speculated that TYPE-MOON, known to be generous to fans, asked them to drop the restriction altogether.Fact|date=June 2008As of now, no restrictions about conversions of their products are known today.
External links
* [http://www13.plala.or.jp/french/ French-Bread's Official Website] ja icon
* [http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/~k_wata/ Watanabe Seisakujo's Official Website] ja icon
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