Kaminari no Gotoku: Choukousoku Igo, roughly translating to “Like Lightning: Ultra Fast Go”, though some magazines printed the title as “Like Thunder Go” - it was a game planned for the Nintendo64, to be released by Seta and supposedly scheduled for a January 1997 launch, according to gaming magazines. While the game was based on the Japanese board game called Go, it was actually partly developed by an American company called Toyogo Inc, out of Lexington, Massachusetts.

Toyogo was co-founded by a programmer called Bruce Wilcox, a graduate of the University of Michigan who had been researching computer-based Go since the early 1970’s. Toyogo and David Fotland, who had programmed the highly acclaimed “The Many Faces of Go”, joined forces to deliver the best algorithm and engine for commercial videogame releases.

So, Seta would license the Go engine from David Fotland/Toyogo and a team of programmers and designers at Seta would then "wrap a game around the engine they had licensed". This also means that Toyogo did not program the entire game, if anything it’s a joint-venture at the very best, but I would claim that Seta is responsible for making Kaminari no Gotoku: Choukousoku Igo into a playable game, based on the information I have recovered so far.

In fact, it turns out that an old Seta page from back in the day still exists on archive.org. The game was going to be a 32mbit game, being one of the smallest N64 games known to exist. Saving would be possible by using a Controller Pak - 12 pages were needed for saving, and the game would retail for 9800 Yen, which is roughly US$60. The archived Seta website however only provides a “To be determined” for the release date, while some gaming magazines wrote January 1997, that might’ve been misleading.

Seta wrote on their website (translated by Google)

The prevailing image of Go software until now has been: 'The computer takes forever to think, making it completely impractical'… Now, a new software has arrived to overturn this stereotype! Harnessing the power of the remarkably high-spec console, the 'NINTENDO64', Kaminari no Gotoki ~Chō-kōsoku Igo~ (Like Lightning ~Ultra-Fast Go~) aims for unprecedented speed and ease of play. Please look forward to it! When it comes to tabletop games, the most critical factor is 'the level of challenge.' If your opponent is too strong, you lose the motivation to play, but if they are too weak, you quickly get bored. Kaminari no Gotoki ~Chō-kōsoku Igo~ takes this fully into account, offering 5 computer difficulty levels and 10 handicap options. This ensures that absolutely anyone can enjoy the game! The 'Toryumon' mode shown in the photo is a tournament style survival mode. You can also play head-to-head matches, which adds a lot of variety to the gameplay. There are 10 unique characters in total. In 'Toryumon' mode, your opponent's facial expressions change dynamically based on the state of the game. Seeing them panic with an 'Oh no!' expression might just bring a smug smile to your face.

Unfortunately the release of Kaminari no Gotoku: Choukousoku Igo never happened and it’s unknown why that was – other than word has it that Seta would see sales decline for video games in the late 1990’s, and financial difficulties the company was facing could have put an end to the least "interesting" titles in development. Still though, Seta was one of the most active developers for the Nintendo64, having games in the works such as Rev Limit and Gendai Dai-Senryaku: Ultimate War, which both went unreleased - however they also actually managed to release quite a few titles over the years.

Seta is also known for releasing Morita Shogi, the only N64 cart with a built-in modem and they would eventually release the Aleck64 system, which is an arcade board based off the N64 and also go on to develop several games for this system, after more or less abandoning the Nintendo64 console.

But back to Kaminari no Gotoku: Choukousoku Igo, it seems like the game would just be silently cancelled and never really heard or thought of again, maybe because it had next to no appeal outside of Asia, the title and all traces of it would be lost to time. The last trace of the title was in July 1997, but in October 1997 the title was removed from Seta’s website.

Well fast forward to August 2026 where an ebay auction would appear, supposedly with a working copy of the game, although no screenshots of the game being played was included in the auction.

The cartridge looks like other Seta cartridges found, this one states that it’s Cart #45, property of the Seta Sales department, states that "If the user is to be changed, you must go through the Sales Department" and last but not least, the title of the game.

According to the seller the previous owner was an employee at Atari, whether that is actually true or not and how it came into possession by an Atari employee is unknown. With a sales price just shy of US$30.000, yes really, I do not see this cart sell anytime soon and with no actually game footage I can’t really say if it actually contains  Kaminari no Gotoku: Choukousoku Igo, but if it does, happy days – another long lost N64 title has surfaced.

Seta closed its doors in January of 2009 after some some economic challenges, including an internal accounting scandal. The assets were absorbed by Aruze Corporation, now known as Universal Entertainment Corporation and Seta was shut down a few months later in 2009. Aruze had purchased a majority stake in Seta in 1999 during Seta's financial struggles and essentially forced Seta to halt its traditional video game development to focus on Pachinko software, Seta's last videogame would be Legend of Golfer, released for the Game Cube in 2004.