Ultimate Domain, a fighting game that never was.

Hello friends, today I bring you an arcade fighting game that never was. I’m always sad when I find out about a game that could have been, especially when there are screenshots, video, or even beta tests for fans to pour over. This was the case for the King of Fighter’s World. Then there were the studios that put some working prototypes in arcades like Capcom Fighting All Stars, and generated some press in the magazines.

There are also games that were never shown to the public, but managed to get exposure by accident like the role-playing-meets-fighting game Dragon’s Heaven. The things that made me the saddest were the fighting games that were 99% done, had already been testing in the arcade, and for whatever reason the studio pulled the plug. Such was the case for Ken-Ju, an arcade game that was also going to get a port for the Dreamcast.

I spent the end of summer, and part of fall 2023 moving many of my fighting game magazines, manhua, and rare game books out of the garage, and into my apartment. As I was organizing them I noticed there was a fighting game that I do not recall being released. Ultimate Domain was a collaboration from Atlus, and Racdym. The 3D fighting game got a short preview in the October 15, 1996 issue of Gamest. The magazine mentioned that they hadn’t covered an Atlas fighter since the Goketsuji series, aka Power Instinct almost 10 months previously, and that it had been almost an additional year in development before this was one revealed. What made Ultimate Domain unique was that it was 3D. All of the previous fighters from the studio were sprite based. Polygonal games were beginning to take over the various genres in the mid ‘90s. The technology worked great in things like racing games, and space shooters, but seemed to be a mixed bag with the fighting genre. Accurate collision detection in 3D didn’t have the speed, or flow that sprite-based hit boxes provided to audiences. Anybody that played Street Fighter II, and Virtua Fighter could relay how unique 2D, and 3D felt.

The Gamest staff didn’t get much time with the title. They explained that there were four playable characters in the demo, one of which looked like an animal man. The designs, and character selection art looked to be by Range Murata, the artist behind the Power Instinct games. The preview said that the stages seemed to have ring outs, and some of them even had low ceilings. To separate it from the other early crop of 3D fighters like Soul Edge (1995), Tekken (1994), and Virtua Fighter (1993) this game was supposed to feature super attacks like the 2D fighters. The characters had something called SOL (as in sun) Power, which had a separate meter under the traditional health bar. The magazine hoped to do a more in-depth article in the following issue. I didn’t have the following issue of Gamest so I had to track it down from an online bidding site, and wait for it to be delivered. It finally arrived in Fall of 2023, and despite how eager I was to scan the pages there was no further information about the game.

I checked the table of contents for almost every other issue in ’96, and ’97, and I never saw any further mention of Ultimate Domain. I couldn’t find any other details on it in any game forums, or Japanese web pages. I hit a dead end with this game. That was when I heard about a Playstation game that was published at the end of 1996 called Heaven's Gate. With no relation to the cult of the same name whose members committed mass suicide a year later. It was a shame because I would have loved to have seen footage of this title in the arcade. The screenshots that I scanned in for this blog entry were the only ones that I know of while the game was in development. I wish there was more I could share with you. I’ll keep digging, and if anything else turns up then I’ll be sure to share it with you. Were there any fighting games that you wish you had played? Or any unfinished / unpublished titles that you wanted to play I’d like to hear about it. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!