What "Lost Media" are you interested in?

[Hawk of The Crystals]

I'd say the unreleased songs from Fist Of The North Star's soundtrack from the '84 anime. I've seen a ton of channels that try to reconstruct them through multiple means, but it mostly ends up sounding terrible, not always, by sometimes.

 

Toei most likely disposed of the original masters of the unreleased music tracks, much like many things from their stuff in the 80's, but it doesn't hurt to think that maybe, just maybe there's a few that weren't thrown away, or overwritten.

 

An example:

 

[CrocMagnum]

I was following a very singular project for a year or so. Sadly today I've learned that it has been taken down. 

 

The project was aimed at restoring the movie "Super Mario Bros" (1993).

 

Indeed, the original directors were not satisfied with the original theatrical cut. One day some folks came up with a VHS tape containing 20-minutes additional-exclusive footage. Then they asked Garrett Gilchrist, writer & director, to work on the restoration. 

 

Suprisingly the screenshots of this "Super Mario Bros: The Movie (1993) Extended / Restored" - also known as the "Morton-Jankel Cut" - were very promising. Let me remind you that the guy had to work from some shitty VHS source ^^. 

 

What kills me is that this project was endorsed officially at first.

 

Anyways all that remains are a few articles, like this cool interview of Garrett Gilchrist himself and his following commentary on youtube which is super insightful:  

 

 

Edited August 17, 2022 by CrocMagnum

[Wadmodder Shalton]

The projects that were being developed by the ultra-forgotten developer Scavenger Inc.

They were a small developer studio and publisher that had offices in Boston, California, Demark, England and Sweden active between 1996 and 1997, before going under in 1997 to 1998. The company only had two games released, Scorcher which was a futuristic racing game developed by Zrinx, and Amok which was a third person mecha game, both released in 1996.

Ten game projects were being developed by Scavenger before their bankruptcy after a dispute with GT Interactive, and nothing survives of these unreleased games other than screenshots and concept art, and maybe even a trailer.

X-Men Mind Games - a cancelled action game based on the X-Men comics planned for the Sega 32X to be released between 1995 to 1996, which was shown at E3 1995 but got cancelled due to the 32X not selling well. There is a prototype of this game online but it's very barebones at best. Obviously, the graphical and gameplay style is very uninspired and the sprite animations reminds me of the unreleased 1994 Fantastic Four movie produced by Roger Corman.

Heavy Machinery - a cancelled racing car combat game planned for the Sega 32X, which stated off as Nitro Wreaks for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, but cancelled likely due to the low sales of the 32X itself.

Mudkicker - a cancelled offroad racing game planned for the Sony Playstation and PC.

Spanish Blood - a cancelled pirate-themed adventure game for the Sony Playstation and Sega Saturn which was announced at E3 1996.

Angel - a cancelled platform-adventure game for the Sega Saturn, which was supposedly shown at E3 1996.

Aqua - a cancelled action-adventure game for the Sega Saturn and PC which the player would have been able to explore a sunken Mayan city under the sea, looking at fishes and other aquatic fauna. 

Spearhead - a cancelled action-puzzle game for the Sega Saturn.

Into the Shadows - a cancelled fighting game planned for the Sega Saturn and PC being developed by Trition, an ex demo group from Sweden which was to be published by Scavenger.

Tarantula - a cancelled action game planned for the Sony Playstation, Sega Saturn and PC which was developed by the internal Team Mescal that was shown at E3 1996.

Terminus - a cancelled action adventure shooter game planned for the Sony Playstation, Sega Saturn and PC which was stated in press releases that it would quote "give Tomb Raider a run for it's money". Interestingly, the team that worked on this project internally known as Team Fetus were later hired by Shiny Entertainment, and their project Terminus was eventually reworked and morphed into the PC game Messiah released in 2000 and published by Interplay.

Just wanted to get these unreleased Scavenger game projects out of the way.

Edited October 7, 2022 by Wadmodder Shalton

[Herr Dethnout]

This

Just for the lols

Also I have interest in the original Doom 4 build and ZUN's Frontal Attack song

[Wyrmwood]

Not sure if this one's been mentioned but if anyone knows the whereabouts of the source code for Icewind Dale 2, could they please let Beamdog know. Would save me so much eye-strain from tiny item drops, I love all the Infinity Engine games and it's such a shame it's the only one that can't have an enhanced edition. It's easy to see how some media's fallen down crack's, but that Bioware lost the source code for such an iconic game is pretty damn negligent.

Edited September 24, 2022 by Wyrmwood

[Daytime Waitress]

3 hours ago, Wyrmwood said:

Not sure if this one's been mentioned but if anyone knows the whereabouts of the source code for Icewind Dale 2, could they please let Beamdog know. Would save me so much eye-strain from tiny item drops, I love all the Infinity Engine games and it's such a shame it's the only one that can't have an enhanced edition. It's easy to see how some media's fallen down crack's, but that Bioware lost the source code for such an iconic game is pretty damn negligent.

 

That's pretty shitty. It just got lost when all the licenses changed ownership?

[Wyrmwood]

1 hour ago, Daytime Waitress said:

 

That's pretty shitty. It just got lost when all the licenses changed ownership?

 

Yeah believe the archives were passed from Bioware to Atari to Wizards of the Coast before being passed to Beamdog at which point some-one realized the code for Icewind Dale 2 was missing. Still never been found, I believe Beamdog had even reached out Obsidian where a few of the original devs work but still no joy.

Thank God I can still play the original on GOG and a few mods can bring some of the features but after a lot of play on the enhanced editions with so many QoL improvements (plus Switch versions) its damn shame we'll probably never see an EE version of the last Infinity Engine game.

[Panzermann11]

For me, it's definitely the videos that used to reside from Machinima's YouTube channel, before they were all wiped in early 2019, particularly ones from 2006-2009. I have a playlist dedicated to reuploads of Machinima's videos, and I have some of their videos reuploaded on my channel. I've been watching Machinima since 2011-2012 when I was around seven to eight, when I first discovered the Internet. 

 

There was a video which introduced me to Tape Five called "What's in the Suitcase"? It's a Team Fortress 2 machinima from the late 2000's which featured a group against an Engineer in 2Fort trying to find out what the enemy intelligence contains while "Suitcase #347" plays in the background. The machinima never revealed what's inside the intelligence, though.

 

EDIT: I also have plenty of videos I have on my SSD that I uploaded on my Drive in case one of the videos from the playlist goes kaput.

Edited March 9, 2023 by Panzermann11

[Wadmodder Shalton]

The early beta builds of Lego Star Wars The Video Game made between 2003 and 2004.

The first Lego Star Wars game had many content cut during development with a few stages being removed with the only surviving material for these levels being a couple of videos of the beta builds on YouTube by John Burton on his GameHut channel, and a couple of leftover maps, unused early cutscenes and character data which has been widely covered by Linterni Gamer on YouTube.

A couple of the cut stages that appeared in beta builds that got cut include the following:

Anakin's Flight - a flight stage that was planned to be included in The Phantom Menace chapters, based on the Naboo Starfighter flight scene, which was cut to try and keep parity with the amount of levels in each episode, and Episode I was initially planned to have seven levels. Interestingly, this early version of this stage is still present in the January 2005 PS2 prototype, and this stage was reworked into The Complete Saga.

Bounty Hunter Pursuit - a level planned to be included with the Attack of the Clones chapters, which was based on the Bounty Hunter Chase scene of Zam Wesell on Coruscant, which was cut for reasons that haven't been explained, with the only surviving material being an unused cutscene that would've played at the end of the level, and as such Attack of the Clones only had five levels in the final version. Interestingly, this level was reworked into The Complete Saga game.

Asteroid Dogfight - another level planned for the Attack of the Clones chapters, which was to be based on the scene where Obi-Wan Kenobi chases Jango Fett through the asteroid ring above Geonosis, which was also cut for reasons not explained.

Boga Chase - a planned level for the Revenge of the Sith chapters, based on the scene where Obi-Wan Kenobi chases General Grievous while riding a Boga on Utapau, which was cut as the developers couldn't figure out how this stage would work with the game's two-player coop mode. The only thing that survives in the final game is the unused placeholder Boga model in the game's files.

While we only have the January 2005 Playstation 2 prototype build available, having the other builds in a playable state would be a fascinating thing to see unearthed to the public.

Edited October 9, 2022 by Wadmodder Shalton

[Panzermann11]

Does anyone remember Oska Software and their Cards-N-Toons? I had plenty of their animations in the hard drive of an old computer of mine when I was a kid, but sadly these are gone now, and I'm certain some of their animations are lost forever since they weren't saved in the Wayback Machine.

 

I remember their famous Pong parody and I remember watching an animation of theirs featuring the Terminator and his famous line "Hasta la vista, baby".

Edited October 10, 2022 by Panzermann11

[Sonikkumania]

1 hour ago, Panzermann11 said:

Does anyone remember Oska Software and their Cards-N-Toons? I had plenty of their animations in the hard drive of an old computer of mine when I was a kid, but sadly these are gone now, and I'm certain since they closed down, a few of their animations may have been lost forever.

 

I remember their famous Pong parody and I remember watching an animation of theirs featuring the Terminator and his famous line "Hasta la vista, baby".

Didn't they have all those sex related flash animations? :D

[Panzermann11]

52 minutes ago, Sonikkumania said:

Didn't they have all those sex related flash animations? :D

Yeah. They also have plenty of political satire animations, the most popular being the Osama bin Laden song.

Edited October 10, 2022 by Panzermann11

[Sonikkumania]

3 hours ago, Panzermann11 said:

Yeah. They also have plenty of political satire animations, the most popular being the Osama bin Laden song.

This one??

 

[Sonikkumania]

Many years ago I was lurking the Axis History Forum and I found a thread with a scan of a German newspaper article from 1945, maybe February, where KriPo (KriminalPolizei) was investigating a serial killer of some sort? I dunno why but it felt really surreal, considering the country is in a state of near collapse and there's a murderer on the loose.

[Panzermann11]

6 hours ago, Sonikkumania said:

This one??

 

Yep!

[Wadmodder Shalton]

A couple of maps made for Garry's Mod that were available in the past between 2006 and 2012 (maybe even 2013) that are believed to be lost or never identified, and most of which were never uploaded to either Garrysmod.org, GameBanana or Steam Workshop with only screenshots and old YouTube videos dating back to 2006.

A couple of these appear in many of the oldest GMod YouTube machinimas during the late-2000s to mid-2010s, particularly from the likes of ICTON, DasBoSchitt, Kitty0706, Onrox206's Exploring Random Maps series, among others.

The only couple of sources that had covered and identified many of these early GMod maps prior to the current version GMod 13 include kacpi26's GMod Easter Eggs series, stellarr 1's History of GMod's Most Popular Maps, Paracosm's Revisiting Historic Garry's Mod Maps, and a couple others.

One could try to make a Steam Workshop collection for each of the maps that had either never been identified or are hard to find in most cases, but that would take a lot of effort and resources to make such a collection.

[PsyDOOMer]

During the development of Marathon Infinity's singleplayer campaign, which was originally going to be nothing more than an expansion pack for Marathon 2: Durandal, various hints and easter eggs were included by Double Aught (a company founded by ex-members of Bungie and who were put in charge of the expansion-now-fully-fledged-game) towards their new IP: Duality.

 

The basic premise would have been (and curiously similar to that of the Marathon series) that you would play as some kind of lab rat superhuman, thrown into a conflict threatening to boil into civil war, awakening their power and stopping the Builders, sentient old beings trapped deep underground the planet, from being destroyed by their Enemy, a supernatural eldritch being. 

 

 

The game was only ever shown as screenshots and short text fragments describing the world and setting, with the biggest piece coming from a convoluted secret in Marathon Infinity involving hidden hex codes and old Mac formats to discover a completely new level, which features a story set in an early version of Duality. The game ended up being unreleased and Double Aught going defunct, and although Greg Kirkpatrick says he still has everything that DA ever did, it is unlikely that it will be released currently.

 

 

Quote

My big takeaway twenty years later from DA was that we should have just shipped ANYTHING. At a few different points along that journey we had some really awesome and groundbreaking stuff, and we just had to take a leap of faith and put it out.

- Greg Kirkpatrick, Reddit AMA, 2019.

 

 

[Wadmodder Shalton]

The original 2008 and 2009 builds of Ride to Hell, as the game was originally envisioned as an open world game set in the 1960s America with biker culture before that version was scrapped in 2010 after the closing of Deep Silver Vienna and Eutechnyx continuing work up until 2013 where it was retitled to Ride to Hell Retribution.

And also the playable builds of the other two games in the ill-fated Ride to Hell series being Route 666 for PSN and XBLA, and Beatdown for mobile devices, though aside from a trailer for the former title, nothing else ever surfaced for either title.

But as we all know, once Ride to Hell Retribution was released, it was widely panned by critics and gamers alike for its bad graphics, many pathetic bugs and glitches, insulting betrayal of sex and women, low quality audio, and the cutting of the open world in favor of levels that are now way too linear and inferior.

In fact, as a result of the negative reviews of Ride to Hell Retribution, Deep Silver decided to cancel both Ride to Hell Route 666 and Ride to Hell Beatdown without even an official announcement. And if that wasn't enough for you, it seems that even both Eutechnyx and Deep Silver wanted to "Disown" this game by removing it from Steam the following year in September 2014, which makes the PC version unofficially and mockingly referred to as "Ride to Hell Redistributable 0%" or "Ride to Hell Redistribution 0%" due to its unavailability on PC digital distribution platforms and all disc copies being just digital download codes.

Edited November 1, 2022 by Wadmodder Shalton

[DrRock]

I'd be super stoked to get my hands on the unreleased GBC games made by Karma Studios. It seems those guys had a very good handle on getting a lot of color out of the GBC, plus the variety of game genres on display is also enticing. I doubt most of these are anywhere near finished but getting to play even little demo versions of them would be quite nice.

 

One of their games, called Bounced, thankfully managed to see the light of day in an almost finished state during the big Nintendo leak a couple years back. I was first made aware of this game by seeing a preview of that game way back in my kiddie days in an issue of some short lived gaming magazine with a GBC focus.

 

That very same issue also featured a preview of the similarly cancelled Tyrannosaurus Tex, which too managed to find it's way on to the internet.

Spoiler

 

 

Another impressive looking GBC title that didn't reach store shelves would have been Manfred Trenz' sequel to the C64 classic Katakis. This time around with a Starfox or Space Harrier-like playing perspective. I would love for this pop up on the Nintendo eShop some day. Seems way too good of a game to just do nothing with.

Spoiler

 

 

Edited December 2, 2022 by DrRock
it's Tex, stupid

[Wadmodder Shalton]

The Alpha and Beta builds of any of the Build Engine games between 1994 and 1997 (maybe even 1998). As far as we know, a lot of pre-release builds of Duke Nukem 3D and Blood are lost or are still in the hands of the rights holder and developers of both games.

 

For Duke 3D, while 3D Realms did discover these back in 2013 to 2014, they couldn't release them due to Gearbox Software owning the rights to the Duke Nukem IP. Unless they ever get leaked on 4chan (a website where a lot of beta builds of old games rarely get leaked), the Duke 3D beta builds will likely remain in the hands of 3D Realms developers, unless the beta release group "x0r_jmp" has the Duke 3D beta builds. Now to think of it, given that the unreleased 2001 build of Duke Nukem Forever and the unreleased spin-off game Duke Nukem Endangered Species leaked, perhaps the group "x0r_jmp" are either a bunch of ex-employees that formerly worked at the current incarnation of 3D Realms in Denmark or ex-Gearbox employees that left either company during the COVID-19 Pandemic or something like that.

 

As for Blood, Kinda different story, early builds older than February 1996 aren't likely to exist in the archives of either 3D Realms or Monolith Productions.

 

Another big mystery of the early developments of the Build engine is any possible early and later builds of two unreleased games, Corridor 8 Galactic Wars by Capstone Software and Fate by DogBone Software. As far as we know, only a barebones prototype for the former was compiled and only a demo for the latter was made available before IntraCorp went bankrupt in October-November 1996, resulting in both games never being completed. The games likely also never appeared or was never featured on any PC gaming magazine articles in 1996, as there isn't any official scans of any magazine screenshots of either game anywhere to be seen, which would've given us what the later stages of both games looked like, so there likely was never any previews for both games either. Unless former Capstone programmer Les Bird does have any further material for the unreleased Intracorp Build Engine games, any unseen assets related to both Corridor 8 and Fate are likely lost to time.

Edited December 24, 2022 by Wadmodder Shalton

[Taw Tu'lki]

I checked an one YouTube channel that based on adding some rare and unidentified songs.

Barni

The videos in his channel are all sorts of pictures taken from the Internet, sometimes a slideshow of one picture, accompanied by an unidentified song. Unidentified songs are marked as "Unknown artist - help identify". Users, if they suddenly know, write comments under the video and name the song. As a result, the name of the video is changed to some symbol. It can be a name, word "solved" or some symbols like a bannan or strawberry.

[nathanB404]

the doom 2016 gameplay they showed off at quake con 2014. it was shown behind closed doors, and no one has the full footage recorded that was showcased. only seconds of footage exists. maybe someday...

 

Edited December 24, 2022 by nathanB404
to show off a video in reference to my comment

[Murdoch]

6 hours ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

As for Blood, Kinda different story, early builds older than February 1996 aren't likely to exist in the archives of either 3D Realms or Monolith Productions.

 

Well given 3DR had absolutely nothing to do with Blood's development, only providing funding to the original early developer, yes it is a safe bet they do not have it.

Edited December 24, 2022 by Murdoch

[Wadmodder Shalton]

A couple more lost gaming media that I can think of on the top of my head.

 

The War of Xen - an ambitious Half-Life 1 mod that was being developed by pietrekder in the 2000s. There were a couple of screenshots released and four videos showcasing the features of the mod. Sadly the mod itself never had any official release in any form, unless if any demo beta builds have ever survived. Radiation Hazard did two videos on this unreleased mod.

Manhunt 2 - Rockstar Vienna builds: before the release of the infamous controversial sequel in 2007 developed by Rockstar London, an earlier version was being developed by Rockstar Vienna between 2004 and 2006 shortly after the release of the first game until the studio's closure in May 2006. Given that both Rockstar and Take-Two are notorious when it comes to overprotectiveness to their IPs, it's likely they will never get leaked to the public and it's unlikely how different the Rockstar Vienna version would've been from the final version.

 

Doom X - an ambitious ZDoom mod being developed by Melvin Flynt between 2006 until 2016, which was to be a 32-level megawad complete with new monsters and weapons. It was to be an updated version of a 1997 beta version of "The Last Marine". Probably unofficially abandoned around the late-2010s, perhaps due to the discontinuation of ZDoom by Randy Heit in 2017, Flynt losing interest on the project, or the author not wanting to extend the time or resources to transfer monster and weapon code from DECORATE to ZScript. The official website is now dead and redirects you to either an ad phishing site or a domain parking site. So in other words, the project is now likely no longer in development.

 

Edited February 18, 2023 by Wadmodder Shalton

[Panzermann11]

Alright, this isn't exactly lost media, but more like "I remember it, but I can't find it" sort of media, and I don't know a good thread for this particular kind of stuff.

 

I remember watching a program on TV which name I forgot that showed a short 3D animation. It shows what appears to be Woody from Neighbors from Hell, sleeping in his bed. After a while, an alien UFO shows up and abduct him. I remember the programme even name-drops Woody, and having played Neighbors from Hell when I was a kid, I immediately recongized the reference.

Edited March 26, 2023 by Panzermann11

[heliumlamb]

the full 8 minute recording (audio AND video, someone went into the store with a camera) of this phone call

 

[Jazz Cappricio]

There's footage out there of a very strange, somewhat uncanny proof-of-concept/very early build of Metroid 4.

It was shown at an old E3 gameshow. The video has always caught my interest because Fusion is a very nostalgic game for me.

I'm not entirely sure if it can truly be considered lost media, as it was clearly just a cobbled-together build with video footage available, but I would love it if the footage was in more legible quality.

 

[Panzermann11]

The full 30-minute recording of this. It was available on the site linked on the description but the audio link appears to be dead and I've got no luck using the Wayback Machine.

 

EDIT: I finally found the full recording now! There's a story on how I got the audio on the description.

 

Edited September 20, 2023 by Panzermann11

[HorrorMovieRei]

Lately I've been following with baited breath the search for some creepy pasta lost media, like the origin of Jeff the Killer. As of now it's pretty much agreed that the original unedited image, whatever it was, came from japanese internet in the early aughts. People used to think it was based on that 4chan post of the woman that was bullied, but that has been debunked since the image dates way back. (and also that woman never existed)

 

Another one is the location of the original backrooms which also has an ungoing search. I actually don't even like the backrooms personally because of how over exposed and over explained it's become and also for assimilating a huge part of the "liminal spaces" art/aesthetic into it's own fandom. But I'll be damned if I'm not dying of curiosity to learn more about this seemingly innocuous room that managed to get a vice grip on the internet horror scene.

[Geniraul]

These musical projects:

1. Tony Diez — LNX (2008)
2. X Gangs — Pourquoi moi (Bootleg) (2009)
3. Tony Diez — The Next level (2012)
4. Axel Tony — Je te ressemble (2013)
5. Tony Diez — The Next tape (2013)
6. Scoopstar — L'Apothéose (2014)
7. Tony Diez — Le Début de la fin (2014)
8. DJ Skorp — Savoir-faire, vol. 2 (2015)
9. Clayton Hamilton — Afrika ley di men (2017)
10. Abou Debeing — Mon histoire, pt. 1 (2020)

Edited April 24, 2023 by Geniraul