10 Embarrassing Accidental Video Game Leaks

Usually when we hear reports of games leaking to the public, it's before said game's release.

However, back in April 2019, an early scrapped Atari prototype of arcade game Akka Arrh appeared on the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (or MAME), and the game previously exclusive to only a handful of collectors who owned the first few original arcade cabinets had leaked online to the masses over 37 years after the game's conception.

Akka Arrh was released to a small audience back in 1982, and deemed a little too complicated for the masses at the time. As such, even though the game had been completed, it was scrapped in favor of other better-reviewed Atari titles.

Only three cabinets are reported to exist, in the possession of tight-lipped, private collectors. The fact that the game was available exclusively to them, and occasionally to arcade convention-goers, kept it valuable.

Someone somehow getting hold of the source code and converting it for emulation almost 4 decades later by dumping the ROM not only devalues the physical arcade cabinets, but also dissipates all the mysteries and urban legends surrounding the scrapped game.

It's quite sad, really.