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TAI-X

The Warlocks of the Fates: A proto-Arcana Heart

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This canceled Neo-Geo fighter from 1995 by Astec21 has been known about for a very long time, and a nearly complete build of the game on a prototype cartridge has been confirmed to exist, but the dumped ROM has never been made publicly available. That fact has not yet changed, but what has changed is that we finally have the first video footage of the game.

 

Intro: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm20396473

Gameplay (full arcade run): http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm22086702

 

How would I describe it? It's Arcana Heart eleven years before Arcana Heart. The similarities are so striking that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that some of Examu's staff played the game at a location test and were inspired by it. Huge stages with lots of vertical space, lots of large and powerful special moves, most (if not all) characters have strong air mobility options, and you even get a choice of different magic gems to equip your character with on the select screen. It looks quite a bit clunkier than Arcana Heart given its age, but still very fun and playable. I can see why it was canceled, though, as I don't think the world was ready for a fighter like this in 1995. Test audiences would have been utterly bewildered by it back when the original Street Fighter Alpha was new and cutting edge.

 

Did I mention that the music is amazing? Not up to Last Blade standards, but one of the better OSTs on the Neo-Geo I've heard, and would probably be very danceable.

 

I really hope we finally get to play it through emulation someday. It would also be a perfect candidate for a Neo-Geo Station release if SNKP ever wanted to revive that service - the canceled Neo MVS version of Ironclad was already released through Wii Virtual Console. I doubt the source code is in their possession anymore, though.

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Examu is made by Ex-SNK employees, i wouldn't be surprised if some of them were involved on this game.

Edit

After watching the video it seems that it shares more with Daemon Bride than what it shares with AH, outside the magic select thing.

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Did a Moby Games lookup on the staff members involved in search of links to Arcana Heart/Daemon Bride. I didn't find any, but some of their other credits were still of interest.

 

Planning director Shinichi Itoh was a graphic artist on numerous Falcom RPGs, including Brandish 2, The Legend of Xanadu, and Trails in the Sky(!).

 

Programmer Tomohisa Yamagata did coding for the cult classic PS1 shmup Harmful Park.

 

Programmer Takeshi Nishino worked on the Atomiswave run-and-gun platformer Dolphin Blue, often compared to Metal Slug.

 

Sub director Masaru Moriya drew background art for Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and was a lead design supporter for Jump Superstars.

 

Special thanks credit Chikahito Ikami was a character designer/animator for Vanillaware's Princess Crown.

 

Assuming it's not someone else with the same name, special thanks credit Nobuyuki Yamashita was the lead director of Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram(!).

Even if they weren't involved, there's a decent chance that someone at SNK who went on to form Examu saw the game and was inspired by it.

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