Footage of Lost Akira Game Surfaces

Akira, the classic well-loved animated action film from  Katsuhiro Otomo, had a couple of video game adaptations back in the day, but nothing especially interesting. THQ had been working on a pretty major one – a platformer very much in the vein of “adult platformers” of the time – but it eventually got cancelled. Now, twenty years later, footage has surfaced of just what the title might have looked like.

This isn’t some small title that ended up disappearing before anybody even knew it existed, and it’s obvious from later releases that there wasn’t much problem with handing out the rights to pretty much whoever wanted them (hence a pinball game released on PS2), so we can only presume that the end result was going to be pretty garbage. And remember: if THQ cancelled it, you can tell that it really would have been bottom of the barrel, E.T. stuff. 

Akira would have been released on the SNES and the Genesis/MegaDrive, but confusion about the direction of the project, as well as about the limitations of Nintendo’s console led to the cancellation of the project.

From an interview with Jim Gregory published by Hardcore Gaming 101:

It was not so much cancelled or scrapped as it fell into neglect. Larry transferred rights to THQ and we couldn’t get clear agreement on the game elements with the project manager. They didn’t understand the limitations of the SNES. The project was then victim to a number of disasters including the lead programmer leaving, and other work being more pressing.

Via: Unseen64