What happens when Japan buys most of America, the world ends, and a teenage girl comes back from the dead? That is the starting point for Showa American Story, an action RPG that seems determined to answer that question with as much blood, absurdity and 1980s pop-culture nostalgia as possible. Developed by NEKCOM Entertainment and published by 4Divinity, the game certainly isn’t short on personality, and a Gamescom demo offered a closer look at a post-apocalyptic adventure that could turn out to be one of 2026’s more unusual games.
What we know
Showa American Story is an action RPG set in an alternate version of the late 1980s in which Japan’s economic power has allowed it to acquire much of the United States. The resulting society has developed its own mixture of Japanese and American influences, but that strange cultural experiment is eventually destroyed by a mysterious catastrophe. After an unspecified amount of time, protagonist Choko mysteriously returns from the dead and awakens in a world populated by zombies, monsters and surviving humans with very different ideas about how to rebuild civilization. Her journey across the remnants of America is driven partly by a search for answers about what happened to her and the world around her.
Combat forms a major part of the experience, with Choko able to combine melee weapons and firearms against groups of enemies. Different weapons are intended to encourage different approaches, while a Rage system provides additional attacks and abilities and ties into the game’s stamina and progression mechanics. Players can acquire and upgrade weapons, improve Choko’s abilities and switch between different equipment during battles, with the game placing particular emphasis on chaining attacks and exploiting openings in enemy defenses.
The road trip is not solely about fighting. Choko travels in an RV that acts as a mobile home base, where she can take part in various activities, interact with companions and develop her abilities. Exploration also provides access to side activities and minigames inspired by the pop culture of the 1980s and 1990s. The game mixes its post-apocalyptic setting with references to that era’s entertainment, technology and visual culture, while its cast of eccentric survivors provides much of the story’s lighter side. Showa American Story is scheduled to launch in 2026 for PC and PlayStation 5.
What we saw
This preview is based on a demo build of Showa American Story that we played during Gamescom after meeting with the NEKCOM Entertainment team. The demo provided a mixture of story-driven combat, exploration and progression, giving us a chance to try several of Choko’s weapons and get a feel for the game’s strange version of America. Unfortunately, the build was also experiencing some technical problems, with our session eventually freezing after around 25 minutes, so there are still some caveats regarding the technical state of what we played.
What we thought
It doesn’t take long for Showa American Story to make its intentions clear. This is not a game that is interested in presenting its alternate history with a straight face. The premise is already wonderfully strange, but NEKCOM pushes it much further through a cast of over-the-top characters, bizarre situations and dialogue that frequently goes completely off the rails. There is a distinctly B-movie quality to the storytelling, with grotesque violence sitting alongside deliberately ridiculous comedy. That tone won’t necessarily work for everyone, and some of the jokes can feel like they are trying very hard to get a reaction, but there is something refreshing about a game that commits so completely to its own peculiar sense of humor. Beneath the silliness, Choko’s search for her sister and the mystery surrounding her resurrection also provide enough of a conventional narrative thread to keep the chaos moving forward.
The combat is similarly ambitious, although this is where the demo exposed some rough edges. Choko can carry several different weapons and switch between them to create more elaborate attack chains, while Rage and stamina encourage a more deliberate rhythm than simply hammering the attack button. Building Rage, spending it on powerful moves and using those attacks to recover stamina creates an interesting foundation, while breaking enemies opens the door to particularly brutal finishing moves. The different weapons also have their own personalities: the katana is suited to more conventional swordplay, the drill delivers enormous damage at the expense of mobility, and even an American flag becomes a ridiculous but surprisingly effective polearm. There is plenty of room for experimentation here, although some of the more advanced weapon-switching techniques require combinations that aren’t particularly intuitive.
That roughness is also noticeable in the actual feel of the fighting. Some attacks don’t have the responsiveness expected from a fast-paced action game, and the interaction between Choko and larger groups of enemies can occasionally become messy. The Rage and stamina mechanics have plenty of potential, but they take some time to understand, while the hectic encounters can make it difficult to keep track of enemies and Choko’s position. Our own session was additionally affected by the technical problems in the demo, culminating in a freeze after roughly 25 minutes. Since this was a Gamescom build, it is too early to say how representative those issues are of the finished PC version, but the combat is an area where NEKCOM still appears to have some polishing to do.
Where Showa American Story makes a particularly strong impression is in its presentation. The environments are packed with visual details that sell the strange collision between Japanese and American culture, while the post-apocalyptic setting gives familiar locations an appropriately bizarre new identity. The characters themselves are less consistently convincing, with some facial animation and presentation looking noticeably less polished, but that almost fits the game’s retro B-movie sensibilities. The music and broader audio design likewise lean heavily into the period setting, while the sheer number of pop-culture references, unusual characters and deliberately ridiculous encounters gives the world a personality of its own. Whether that personality can sustain an entire RPG remains a question, and the combat needs some refinement, but based on this demo, Showa American Story has something increasingly rare: a very clear idea of what kind of game it wants to be, even when that idea is completely bonkers.