A crypto-fueled twist on the Sega IP Sangokushi Taisen (aka Battle of the Three Kingdoms) is set to launch next week, developer Double Jump Tokyo announced on Friday. The impending game release comes almost two years after the studio revealed that it was developing the game under license from Sega.

Launching on Wednesday, April 30, the strategic card battler KAI: Battle of the Three Kingdoms will be available in early access on PC and mobile. Prior to this launch, a three hour PC browser-only “load test” will take place on Monday, April 28. Player data from the brief load test will not carry over to the fully launched game.

Pre-registrations for the game went live in early March, with the developers claiming that over a million people have registered interest so far.

KAI: Battle of Three Kingdoms is a “modern reimagining” of Sega’s Sangokushi Taisen arcade series that first debuted in 2005. The game will be available in English, Japanese, and Traditional Chinese languages.

Built on the Oasys gaming blockchain, special cards called “Awakened Warlords” will be minted as NFTs, allowing players to freely trade the cards on the open market. These cards are set to be the “central focus” of the game, the litepaper says, with each card possessing unique skills that will be key for gameplay strategy.

The litepaper also outlines plans for a SGC token that will be used to obtain card packs, earned through leaderboard placement, and staked to earn points—which can be used for “endgame features,” such as championship events and tournament mode.

Ahead of the early access launch, a Telegram game was launched for players to engage with the IP and potentially win rewards ahead of the rollout. However, in the wake of Telegram going exclusive with The Open Network (TON), the experience was shut down in February.

Gaming giant Sega has been dipping its toes into crypto via the licensing of IP, with both Sangokushi Taisen on Oasys and more recently Code of Joker for the Sui network.

Sega Game Franchise ‘Code of Joker’ Revived on Sui Network

Parasol, the gaming infrastructure subsidiary of Sui network contributor Mysten Labs, announced Friday that the upcoming trading card game Code of Joker: Evolutions—based on a licensed IP from gaming giant Sega—will launch on Sui. The digital trading card game, developed by Jokers Inc., represents the revival of a series first launched by Sega in 2013. The original Code of Joker game was built for arcades, but this version will be playable via web browsers and mobile devices. Code of Joker: Evol...

“Blockchain gaming is still an unknown world for us,” Sega's Shuji Utsumi, then co-COO, explained in a 2023 interview. “I’m looking forward to seeing how NFTs can authentically capture the feeling of owning a card,” he added, referencing the Three Kingdoms game in development.

But you probably won’t see Sonic the Hedgehog and other Sega heavyweights making the jump to blockchain anytime soon. In 2023, Utsumi also said that the gaming giant wouldn’t license its biggest franchises for blockchain spinoffs, fearing it may devalue the brand.

Edited by Andrew Hayward