Splattered Ink: The Story of Tattoo Assassins
Classic GameRoom reviews the game
Sprites have been ripped from Tattoo Assassins.
Destructoid names Tattoo Assassins the #1 worst Mortal Kombat klone!
I-Mockery destroys Tattoo Assassins and its fatalities.
Game endings revealed!
Hilarious dissection of the game.
A peek at one source code file from Tattoo Assassins.
Tattoo Assassins prototype nearly destroyed by flood.
Arcade History entry.
International Arcade Museum (KLOV) entry.
Dan Amrich's insight into the story.
A Youtube video of gameplay, from where you can find many others.
As many as 24 cabinets were produced for the AMOA show in San Antonio in September 1994, but it seems that most were intentionally destroyed in May 1995. The only remaining original cabinets would be ones which were sold to interested collectors shortly before that time.
There are at least four working cabinets known to exist. One was nearly destroyed in the PAPA flood. There may be others, based on stories that the game has been on location in California, Maryland, and a cruise ship. There were two working games in the PAPA Collection, which appeared annually at Replay FX, but the Replay Foundation has liquidated its collection because of COVID.
The game is not "locked up at DE headquarters". Data East Japan went out of business not too long after Data East Pinball became Sega Pinball. None of the machines were ever produced outside of the initial bunch manufactured in Chicago.
Tattoo Assassins has been largely emulated via MAME32, including the ACE/Jack chip for special effects. There may be some bugs remaining. The ROMs can be hard to find, but Google is your friend.