Tattoo Assassins is the stuff that legends are made of. Created by Data East in 1994, Tattoo Assassins was a blatant rip of of the Mortal Kombat series complete with "photo realistic" digitized fighters and fatalities. Rumor has it that the game was so terrible that it never actually saw the light of day.

In the beginning it seemed that Tattoo Assassins was the perfect project. Data East had signed on Bob Gale, the creator of the Back to the Future franchise to help out by creating the characters and the story line and a lot of money was put into filming the various actors and their moves. The premise revolved around a group of fighters who were all tattooed with a magical ink that would allow the tattoos to come to life and help in battle.

As with most fighting games, each character had a back story that worked in to the plot of the game. Tattoo Assassins character list was diverse including a revenge seeking stripper, an Indian, a rock star, a tribal warrior, a Yakuza assassin, a former Navy seal and a Nancy Kerrigan rip off to name but a few. The range of fatalities was also quite large featuring over 200 special endings such as a falling Delorian, octopus attack and more. Delightful special moves included explosive diarrhea and vomiting.

The game was pretty much hated by everyone who worked on it and no actual cabinets were ever made, save one which allegedly lives in the Data East office building to this very day. The "art" on this flyer is rather dull, but it does feature two of the characters from the game, Kholdan who is the big boss and Hannah, the afore mentioned stripper on a revenge trip. The most striking thing though is Hannah's outfit which has got to be one of the ugliest things i have ever seen. it also looks like it's missing a few pieces.

For a complete history of this game including input from a tester and and a member of the game's programming team, check out Dan's Tattoo Assassins page.