Champion Soft

Champion soft was the predecessor company to Alicesoft and still exists as Champion Soft Co., Ltd. as a parent company to Alice Soft and the dormant Alice Blue.

Early years
Yoshiki Shiraki (白木善喜) one day decided to quit his regular job and try game development and so he established Champion Soft Co., Ltd. in January of 1983. At the time he was president of the company and sole developer. Sales were initially carried out by NT Industrial Co., Ltd. (エヌ.ティ.エル産業株式会社), but later on Champion Software Sales Co., Ltd. was created for this purpose.

In the early years, Yoshiki Shiraki (白木善喜) released software once a month. At the time the company mostly produced all-ages titles and there were few adult games.

There was also mention of Copyright and licensing fees in the recruitment section of old advertisements, allowing Champion soft to publish games made by other developers.

Shift to adult gaming
Around the mid 80s, the increasing popularity of home consoles proved to be a large issue for most home computer game developers. Well known companies like Square and Enix already made the move towards the console market. However Champion Soft decided to stick to PC and focus mostly on adult games which weren't available on consoles.

Champion soft had various early attempts in it's shift to adult gaming. In may of 1986 they launched the "GRAPHIC Idol Information Magazine ZETA", which was a "disk magazine". Something similar was tried with 1985's "OMEGA". The ultimate goal of this was to create a "virtual" idol and ZETA would be used to publish her work. Ultimately there would be 5 issues of ZETA and would be the first works of YUKIMI (at the time going by Hakase) and Tori.

1987 was the year TADA joined the company. He'd go on to create such works as Rance and Toushin Toshi under a new brand named Alice Soft.

His first work was to port Kidnapped Miki-chan to MSX. This ultimately became a different game using the same assets, it's now known as Little Princess. This was followed by Little Vampire in 1988, which was his first full work and the third game in the Miki-chan series.

Establishing Alice Soft
According to TADA, the president of Champion Soft wanted to stop producing adult games under this brand in 1987 and to explore different routes for software development. This prompted a need for an adult game brand, which became known as Alice Soft and would be established in 1989. It's first releases were Rance I and Intruder.

Alice Blue was another attempt at such a label, specifically targeting the BL market. It first started work in the late 90s, however it ceased operation on July 16th 2004 due to "high risk, low reward".

Since Alice Soft is technically just a brand name all sales and expenses are recorded as Champion Soft Co., Ltd.

The founder Yoshiki Shiraki (白木善喜) has retired as president and is now chairman. He is succeeded by his eldest son, Yoshinobu Shiraki (白木慶喜).