Genkai Chōsen Distopia (lost unreleased arcade action game; 1994)

The title screen of the game.

Status: Lost

Genkai Chōsen Distopia was an arcade game developed by Toaplan. Genkai Chōsen Distopia is a two-player, side-scrolling hack-and-slash game with a post-apocalyptic setting full of monsters.

History

Genkai Chōsen Distopia was developed by Toaplan from late 1993 to early 1994, and was nearly completed according to Toaplan member Tatsuya Uemura. However, with Toaplan in financial trouble, the company went bankrupt and the game was shelved. Junya Inoue is the only known person to have worked on Genkai Chōsen Distopia, though he doesn't remember exactly what role he was assigned to. The rights were later transferred to Gazelle, one of the companies formed from the ashes of Toaplan. As of September 2022, the rights are currently owned by Tatsujin, Masahiro Yuge's company.

Availability

In 2014, former MAME contributor Eric "ShouTime" Chung announced that he would try to get a PCB of Genkai Chōsen Distopia, and had located somebody who had one. However, in June 2016, around the time he acquired a PCB of Dynamic Trial 7, he noted that the attempt at getting Genkai Chōsen Distopia was a failure in the end due to the owner being unwilling to share with him.

In July 2019, Twitter user @ulchan2 went digging through VHS tapes and unearthed a video of Genkai Chōsen Distopia supplied by Toaplan staff. The video shows off the attract mode, the character and map select screens, and part of the first level. A shorter clip within that same source was found in January 2020, showing the character Fiana entering a level, but the level doesn't seem to be finished as it gets instantly cleared, showing Fiana's victory pose and the bonus score tally. Judging from that clip, the voices used appear to be stock voice clips or placeholders, as Fiana's character selection sound was also used in Konami's Escape Kids and X-Men arcade games.

In May 2022, Twitter user @hatimituxiaoyu leaked the design documents for some planned Toaplan games that walked the plank, including Genkai Chōsen Distopia.