Tattoo Assassins prototype nearly destroyed by flood.
Hilarious dissection of the game.
Arcade History entry.
KLOV entry.
Dan Amrich's insight into the story.
There are at least four working cabinets in existence. 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. At present, two of the working games are at the PAPA World Headquarters.
The game is not "locked up at DE headquarters". Data East went out of business not too long after Data East Pinball became Sega Pinball. None of the machines were ever produced outside of the allotment in Chicago.
As many as 24 cabinets were produced for the AMOA show in San Antonio in September 1994, but some, if not most, were intentionally destroyed in May 1995. The only remaining cabinets would be ones which were sold to interested collectors shortly before that time.
Tattoo Assassins has been largely emulated via MAME32 as of version 0.67. The ACE/Jack chip is not emulated. Also, the ROMs can be hard to find.
Completely gratuitious links below: