Force Five

Force Five was a cancelled fighting game developed by Anchor Inc. (best known for developing Fighters Destiny for the Nintendo 64 and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood for the PS2) that was meant to be released for the Arcade using the Sammy Atomiswave board around 2003, prior to its cancellation.

Why It Was Cancelled[]

Reportedly, early location tests resulted in getting a negative feedback from players, which led to the development of the game stalled out and forgotten.

Result[]

Three years later, Atravita later bought the rights of the game's code and assets (not the entire IP itself though), resulting in Force Five being reworked heavily into Jingi Storm: The Arcade, seeing a release in 2006 to generally negative reactions over the outdated graphics, lackluster characters, and jarring character designs for all the female NPCs. Most infamously, it was almost meant to be shipped as an eroge fighting game, with the more points you obtain during fights, the less clothed the female NPCs in the illustrations will become depending on how good you are, raging from a panty shot to full-on nudity in an attempt to attract male gamers, but it got heavily censored by the Japan Amusement Machine and Marketing Association, thus removing this feature entirely and turning it into a bland, generic 3D fighter instead.
Anchor Inc. never put out another fighting game ever again and ended up ceasing all game development for good, following the release of Phantom Blood, in order to further focus on renewable energy plans.
In early 2021, an unfinished playable ROM of Force Five was eventually leaked online, giving the player a glimpse of what could have been.
- Around that same time, an unofficial port for the Sega Dreamcast was developed and uploaded by Dreamcast-Talk user megavolt85, using the assets from the leak.