Akira in a single poster
Image: Tyler Stout

If you're a fan of anime, then chances are you'll have already appreciated the masterpiece that is Akira. Arguably the first anime movie to find mainstream success in the west, Katsuhiro Otomo's 1988 classic triggered a surge of interest in the medium and offered many western viewers their first taste of mature Japanese animation.

Unsurprisingly, Akira was turned into a Famicom game in 1988, produced by Taito. A Japanese exclusive, it was released well before the western launch of the movie and was never localised. However, when the movie became a critical success stateside, a 16-bit adaption was put into production by THQ which was supposed to launch on the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis and Super SNES, with scaled-down ports also coming to the Game Boy and Game Gear. Despite promotional flyers for the game being packed with the VHS release of the film in the US, it never materialised. You can read more about the title here.

Now, footage - which is over two decades old - has emerged which shows the game in action. There are some impressive cutscenes with loads of animation, but the actual in-game sections look rather rough around the edges.

Would you like to play this game? Presumably a ROM exists somewhere, and perhaps it's only a matter of time before it surfaces online.