Showa American Story proves it’s still on its way with an absolutely bizarre new trailer

Nekcom Entertainment has released a new trailer of their illusive action RPG, Showa American Story, and gosh, is there a lot to unpack? It’s coming sometime in 2025, but the trailer is worth a watch right now. It will probably need more than one, honestly.

Really, we last heard about Showa American Story back in early 2022, and since then, it’s been pretty quiet. I had some worry that its development might have quietly ended. It looks like a pretty ambitious project, but then, it’s hard to really figure out what’s going on in the trailer. Nothing in the marketing suggests it’s an open-world game, but there are many scenes of traveling through the desert. There’s exploration and combat and zombies; it’s how it all fits together that is a mystery.

Narrative details jump around a lot. What’s clear is that it takes place in an alternate reality where Japan became such an imposing economic super-power that it wound up unofficially “colonizing” the United States. This kind of plays off an ‘80s fear, which can be seen in some of the era’s movies and has left a lasting mark on the cyberpunk genre. It’s dated to take place in Shōwa 66. That references Japan’s informal way of basing the year off an Emperor’s reign. It underlines the historical divergence because, in reality, the Shōwa era ended in 1989 with Hirohito’s death.

And while the setting is interesting, it’s played up with bizarre humor. It seems to mash together the more ridiculous elements of Japanese and American culture, specifically during the ‘80s. Nekcom appears to be a Chinese company, but you wouldn’t guess it from the trailer. Or maybe you would, since it does have the whiff of an outside perspective. It’s just top-to-bottom weirdness, as it shows off masses of chest hair, dudes in spandex exercise wear, and various American landmarks decorated with Japanese icons. There’s just so much going on.

But what really interests me is how confidently it shows off its jank. There are some great-looking Unreal Engine vistas there, but it will then zoom in on an awkward animation or a low-detail texture that you would normally overlook. It’s not hiding itself, even if I can’t fully figure out what it’s trying to be. I don’t know how it will turn out, but I can’t look away.

American Showa Story is coming to PC, PS4, and PC sometime in 2025.