The popular 1988 cyberpunk anime film Akira (based on a manga of the same name) depicted a post-apocalyptic 2019 rife with biker gangs, political turmoil, and teenagers with psychic abilities. Though 2019 has come and gone without this vision of the future coming to fruition, frequenters of The Hidden Palace celebrated Christmas by getting to see a previously unreleased prototype for an Akira adaptation being developed for the SEGA Mega Drive (or Genesis in North America) in the early 90s.
The Hidden Palace is an online media preservation community focused on video game development that has been active since 2006. User drx released the Akira prototype file to the site Wednesday alongside a number of screenshots and a hour-long video showcasing different levels within the game.
Akira for the Mega Drive was planned to be released in 1995 by Black Pearl Software, a Chicago-based developer that was acquired by THQ Inc. in 1993. This newly published build of the game is reportedly older than what was shown at the Summer Consumer Electronic Show in 1994. The footage video published by The Hidden Palace's YouTube channel suggests Akira would have let fans live out the film through detailed pixelated cutscenes and many different game genres.
There are behind-the-back motorcycle riding sections similar to Electronic Arts' 1991 Mega Drive title Road Rage, first-person exploration sections akin to FTL Games' 1987 Dungeon Master for the Atari ST (or a grid-based version of the original Doom, given the visible hand of the player's character), 2D platforming like 3D Realms' (then Apogee Software) original Duke Nukem on the MS-DOS, and overhead combat with sprites reminiscent of LucasArt's 1993 Zombies Ate My Neighbors on the Super NES and Mega Drive.
Notes on The Hidden Palace's page where the prototype can be downloaded discuss a number of limitations present in the unfinished game. Over 35 percent of the game's content are "unused sprites and other data" that cannot be accessed, music and sound cues present in the sound test are not used within the game, and the game crashes or freezes when the player arrives at certain levels.
Despite being over 30 years old, Akira is still a cornerstone of popular culture. A live-action version of the story is being created for Warner Bros. by Thor: Ragnarok and Jojo Rabbit director Taika Waititi, and the property has been referenced in recent shows like Stranger Things and Rick and Morty.
The Mega Drive game being developed by Black Pearl Software appears to have been incredibly ambitious. Because it was cancelled, it is impossible to know whether the finished product would have been a flagship game for SEGA's hardware or collapsed in on itself under the weight of that ambition.
But it does seem fitting that Akira would follow in its manga predecessor's footsteps by trying to be a bombastic production, and being able to access this missing piece of gaming history is a wonderful Christmas present.
Source: The Hidden Palace