|
 A
few weeks back, you might've heard some folks talking about an unknown,
unfinished fighting game that was discovered on an old Neo Geo test board.
A collector who goes by "NeoTurfMasta" purchased the Neo Geo test board for $750 and started
messing around with it, which lead him to discover this mysterious 2D
fighting game in prototype form. Well, it didn't take long for the creator of that game to be found, and
now we have some solid facts. The game was
going to be called "Dragon's Heaven" and was created by Kengo
Asai, who previously worked on The Last Blade & Voltage Fighter
Gowcaiser.
After seeing footage
of the prototype version of the game appear online, Japanese site ITMedia was
able to track down creator Kengo Asai to talk about the unfinished project. Asai revealed that early
on in the game's development (1995-1996), the title was known as DarkSeed.
The developers weren't able to get the trademark for DarkSeed (as
there was already a game titled DarkSeed), so they changed the title to Dragon's Heaven.
Asai recalls that "Dark Fantasy" was a popular theme at the time
of the game's development, which sets the tone for Dragon's Heaven.
Dragon's Heaven was
planned to have some innovative features for a fighting game, such as
having a character pursue a "Lawful", "Neutral", or
"Chaotic" morality path. On a playthrough, players would be
asked to make decisions after each bout, which would determine their
morality path. Furthermore, battles would take place at different times of day,
resulting in characters becoming stronger or weaker depending on
the time and their morality path.
"Lawful"
characters would get
stronger during noon and had access to additional attacks, but became weaker at night. "Chaotic"
ones would be strong at night but
weak at noon. And "Neutral" would stay consistently at the
same strength at all times. Character endings and in-game text would also
alter depending on the character's alignment. Dragon's Heaven was also set to
feature 2 characters per team as a way to expand on the time of day /
morality system.
After revealing all of the
details you just read (above), Creator Kengo Asai made some closing statements about the game's eventual cancellation
and salutes the gentleman who discovered his unfinished game:
| "DarkSeed
went through pending for two times due to funding issues, and then
faced official cancellation. Development PCBs aren't really
supposed to leak out, so there's a part of me that's a bit
distraught about that. However, it's been 20 years. As of now, I
salute NeoTurfMasta for his discovery, luck, passion, and
knowledge. Personally it wasn't all fond memories, so together
with my surprise and joy, I also sort of felt the fear of
something coming back and haunting me from 20 years ago. I haven't
changed that much, but it sure brought back memories of how
inexperienced I was back in my youth." |
And now you know.... Indeed,
it's mind-blowing that this
100% unknown game was discovered 2 decades after it was cancelled. Hmm,
makes you wonder what other mystery games could be lurking on random Neo Geo test boards
out there. 
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