Genkai Chōsen Distopia (lost unreleased arcade action game; 1994)
Genkai Chōsen Distopia was an arcade game slated for a 1994 release. Genkai Chōsen Distopia is a two-player, side-scrolling action game with a post-apocalyptic setting full of monsters, killing some of which would drop coins.
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 went nowhere. It is unknown who composed the music to Genkai Chōsen Distopia.
Availability
In 2016, former MAME contributor Eric "ShouTime" Chung tried to find a PCB of Genkai Chōsen Distopia, but the only copy he could locate was being hoarded by someone anonymous. Following the exA-Arcadia lawsuit debacle at the end of 2021, only time will tell if anyone else acquires and publicly dumps a Genkai Chōsen Distopia PCB. There have also been a few guesses that there were Toaplan PCBs in the warehouse of Face (an even more obscure defunct video game company), and that Genkai Chōsen Distopia was included in their stash.
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.
In May 2022, Twitter user @hatimituxiaoyu leaked the design documents for some planned Toaplan games that walked the plank, including Genkai Chōsen Distopia. The posts weren't done as a thread, though.
In June 2022, Game Developer Research Institute (GDRI) discovered that the rights to Genkai Chōsen Distopia were held by Gazelle in 1996, one of the companies where former Toaplan staff migrated after the bankruptcy, but Gazelle did not release it.
Gallery
Images
Videos
Sources
- Source of Uemura's interview.
- The tweet where the first video originated.
- The tweet with the shorter video.
- First few pages of the Distopia documents.
- Concept art for the four heroes.
- Concept art for maps.
- A couple more pages of concept art for the levels.
- GDRI's tweet about the rights.
- The game's page on www.toaplangames.co.jp.