kaneda shaped cherry gummies

they're bad. I'm a little obsessed with them but they're bad. there's only about 3* available to actually play, last i checked, with one of them being an early prototype of a game that never released.

Akira (1988, Famicom) is just a visual novel following the events of the movie. The 8-bit recreations of movie scenes throughout it are probably the best part, but the rest isn't really a lot to write home about. If you've seen the movie, you already know how the game goes, more or less; picking any choice that diverges from the plot will usually end in Kaneda dying or being arrested.

Some of the correct choice paths are really unclear, though, at least in my experience. It's a game you'll be either dying or getting arrested in a lot if you don't have a walkthrough on hand. Also don't do what I did and order 30 drinks at Harukiya and then go for a drive

Akira (1994, Amiga CD32) is in at least the top 1000 worst things to come out of Britain, I think. Every review you'll find of this one says it sucks, and I can personally attest to the fact that, yeah, it really sucks. The first two stages (side-scrolling bike segments) are so extremely precise and trial-and-error based, I just couldn't beat them. I'm sure it's possible but christ alive is it precise. Even if you got past that, though? The second Tetsuo stage is just.. broken. The platform you need to reach is just too high. Your story ends there if you're not using passcodes

(observe the 2 Takashis, also) Of the other stages are a side-scrolling shooter segment, a trek through the solder and rat-filled sewers with Kaneda, and a boss. None of which are fun, if it wasn't obvious.

just look at this boss

I wouldn't say any of them are good, but if I had to pick one that's somewhat fun to play, it's the Genesis port of the '94 prototype, if maybe just from a curiosity standpoint; all of the stages are unfinished, but of the selection of stages you can look at (2 Pole Position-esque biking stages, 2 first-person view maze stages, 2 2D beat-em-up stages, 1 flying gunner stage, 1 where you fight off the army as Tetsuo from a top-down view, and 1 2-player fighting level (only accessible via cheatcode)), the only ones I really didn't like were the first person segments (and that probably mostly owes to it being so early in development that there's nothing to do). it also has achievements on retroachievements, for some reason I'm not sure it would've been good if it were to be finished and released, personally I think the sheer variety of stages could've been a detriment, but I do think it could've been passable when compared to the other Akira games that exist. which isn't saying a lot, there's two officially released, unique Akira games in existence and both of them kind of suck.

I also think it's super interesting how the stage icons are just snippets from the manga; absolutely just a placeholder thing, but still very interesting

Patrick Scott Patterson has a video demonstration of the Game Boy port prototype on his channel, also. I'm a big fan of the goofy placeholder music used throughout it

there's also Akira Psycho Ball. I reserved the star up there for Akira Psycho Ball because it's pinball and I'm not counting it as a unique thing. I actually stopped and put this post in drafts so I could go play it in case I was missing anything, but yeah no.

Thank you to @cowania on twitter for the amazing promo image!! Please check out her work ❤️ https://x.com/cowania_

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