Lost Media.

[BrokenBoy]

Does anyone else find "lost" media to be interesting? Like, there's sooooooo much unreleased tv episodes, movies, game prototypes, and all kinds of other stuff! There's a wiki dedicated to this stuff that I like to visit all the time.

The Lost Media Wiki

Here's some specific things from there that interest me:

Silent Hill (partially found graphic novel adaptation of PlayStation horror game; 1999) - The Lost Media Wiki

Weird looking graphic novel adaptation of the cool-but-hard-to-play survival horror game Silent Hill.

Less Than Zero (lost TV pilot based on novel; 2019) - The Lost Media Wiki

A lost TV show pilot based on a novel that is from one of my favorite authors. I remember trying to follow the show's production before it got canned.

Yeah Yeah Beebiss I (lost NES game; existence unconfirmed; late 1980s) - The Lost Media Wiki

Mysterious NES game only mentioned in mail orders back in the late 80's. No one really knows what exactly this is.


What lost media interests you?

 

[ForestGumpett]

I’ve been jones’ing for an Etch A Sketch lately.

 

[Misery]

The only "lost media" I'm familiar with is mostly stuff like this:

Ignore the floaty thing on the left and the ultra-generic cartridges, this is all in VR. But the game is some absolutely ancient prototype ROM for the equally ancient 2600 console. There are a lot of prototypes in the archive, some of which are seemingly finished games or at least mostly finished, others are clearly only half there or are barely functional. How exactly the retro community gets ahold of these things is unknown to me.... I just play the games, I dont much dive into the story behind each one. Though I have no idea what's going on with the specific game in the screenshot. I havent tried every single one of these yet, the archive is huge.

You might also perhaps consider the nature of golden age arcade games too... any given game probably has a whole pile of different roms associated with it, each being a slightly different version, though the changes would be mostly unnoticable to the player. It is much harder with those to tell if something is a prototype or not, or if it's just a rarely seen version or something early that got discontinued for a bugfix or whatever.

And then there's the grand mess of things on old computers, like DOS PCs, or things like the Commodore 64 or the Spectrum. All sorts of developers were making all sorts of things back then, from major devs to smaller one-man studios, and much of it is tossed to the wind. There are all sorts of places to go on the Net to browse such things, and who knows what you might find?


Other than that, there's also "lost media" that isnt actually real, but is instead created for use in horror stories or something. I do love that concept but it is hard to get right.

Of course the ultimate example of a lost media horror game/thing is the legendary Polybius, which was thought for a VERY long time to have actually existed in some form, but... well, fortunately that one isnt real. Probably. There are a lot of things inspired by that old urban legend though.

 

[BrokenBoy]

Other than that, there's also "lost media" that isnt actually real, but is instead created for use in horror stories or something. I do love that concept but it is hard to get right.

I'm well aware. It's really dumb. There was once this guy who made a 4chan post about some spooky anime he saw on the dark web called "Go For a Punch" and that was basically some dumb creepypasta. Some people thought it was real and tried to look for it. Again, it was really dumb.

Here's something that's really cool:

Action 52 (lost build of cancelled Super Nintendo port of unlicensed compilation game; existence unconfirmed; 1990s) - The Lost Media Wiki

This is an cancelled SNES port of this really crappy game compilation from the 90's. However, no one really knows if it's real or not.

 

[Misery]

I'm well aware. It's really dumb. There was once this guy who made a 4chan post about some spooky anime he saw on the dark web called "Go For a Punch" and that was basically some dumb creepypasta. Some people thought it was real and tried to look for it. Again, it was really dumb.

Here's something that's really cool:

Action 52 (lost build of cancelled Super Nintendo port of unlicensed compilation game; existence unconfirmed; 1990s) - The Lost Media Wiki

This is an cancelled SNES port of this really crappy game compilation from the 90's. However, no one really knows if it's real or not.

Eh, the horror "lost media" stuff can be really darned good, honestly. I can certainly think of a few. Problem is that when it comes to stuff like that you get a bazillion copycats that basically just go "ooooooooh SPOOKY it's like Mario but BLOOD EVERYWHERE" like those stupid .EXE games. And unlike with the SCP Foundation, there's nobody to really curate any of it, which is why there are so many bloody awful ones.

There's a few examples of ones that I like:

Godzilla NES (okay I forget the exact name of this one but it's pretty well known, an actual game is being made of it, and the screenshots used in the original story post were done by a very talented sprite artist)

The Theater (there are numerous versions of this, and a couple of actual games were made of it)

Ben Drowned (the most famous one)

Catastrophe Crow (very recent, there's still some stuff unsolved about this one, and an actual rom does exist for players to pick through and search for clues)

"Pac-Man" (specifically the title is in those weird warbly letters that I cant replicate here. This one isnt a creepypasta, it's an actual game using the "haunted ROM" concept. Very well done, I loved it).

Petscop (holy heck is this one popular. A lot of people LOVE this one. I liked it... until the godawful ending. What a let-down... Lots of cool ideas here but the story ends up being a nonsensical disaster)

AI Builds (not sure what to specifically say here, but this is one of my favorites)

Herobrine (not actually a creepypasta per se. "Herobrine" is a character related to Minecraft, a freaky version of Steve with glowing white eyes, who would just sort of appear at the worst times. Thanks to certain Youtube videos, it was thought for quite awhile that this character actually existed in the game, buried as some sort of bizarre horror easter egg by Notch. Proven to be fake after awhile, but is still frequently referenced. Of course, the game later did get ACTUAL content that was quite a bit scarier than that guy).

For the most part all of these can be found in some sort of video form on Youtube, which is how I hear about them.

Of course, that's just the video game related ones. Plenty of other sorts exist. The "found footage" type in particular got REALLY popular after Blair Witch happened. I'm definitely familiar with quite a few of those (again, on Youtube)

As for Action 52.... that's hilarious no matter what form it takes. What a funky mess that thing is.

 

[BrokenBoy]

Godzilla NES (okay I forget the exact name of this one but it's pretty well known, an actual game is being made of it, and the screenshots used in the original story post were done by a very talented sprite artist)

Yeah, that's the only gaming creepypasta I like.

As for Action 52.... that's hilarious no matter what form it takes. What a funky mess that thing is.

Do you think an prototype of this cancelled SNES version actually exists?

 

[Misery]

Do you think an prototype of this cancelled SNES version actually exists?

Highly unlikely. Considering that the "developers" were exceedingly reluctant to put anything resembling actual effort into the thing, and considering how godawful the first two 52s were (there is one on the Genesis) I cant imagine that there was anything beyond that. The resources werent present and at that point the thing would have been known to be exceptionally terrible. Even if the resources were present from earnings on the previous titles, that type of creator would have been exceedingly reluctant to spend anything to create it... after all, all they cared about was money to begin with.

But it's not just that: It's the fact that the lockout chip (or whatever that security measure was called) on the SNES was much harder to break. Only one unlicensed game exists for the console (unlike the NES, which has *a lot* of them), and it actually has a Game Genie style dual connector, requiring that a second game of any sort be put on top of it, as that's the only way to break the lock. That game was Super 3D Noah's Ark, and it was put out by Wisdom Tree, one of the most prolific unlicensed developers of the NES era, which is likely why they were the only ones able to crack the lock. And they only did so once.

Trying to develop for a console that cannot be broken would be a very special level of stupid. Action 52 may have been idiotic, but you cant create something like that at all by being a moron. Or group of morons, in this case.

 

[BrokenBoy]

Highly unlikely. Considering that the "developers" were exceedingly reluctant to put anything resembling actual effort into the thing, and considering how godawful the first two 52s were (there is one on the Genesis) I cant imagine that there was anything beyond that. The resources werent present and at that point the thing would have been known to be exceptionally terrible. Even if the resources were present from earnings on the previous titles, that type of creator would have been exceedingly reluctant to spend anything to create it... after all, all they cared about was money to begin with.

But it's not just that: It's the fact that the lockout chip (or whatever that security measure was called) on the SNES was much harder to break. Only one unlicensed game exists for the console (unlike the NES, which has *a lot* of them), and it actually has a Game Genie style dual connector, requiring that a second game of any sort be put on top of it, as that's the only way to break the lock. That game was Super 3D Noah's Ark, and it was put out by Wisdom Tree, one of the most prolific unlicensed developers of the NES era, which is likely why they were the only ones able to crack the lock. And they only did so once.

Trying to develop for a console that cannot be broken would be a very special level of stupid. Action 52 may have been idiotic, but you cant create something like that at all by being a moron. Or group of morons, in this case.

Wow. You have a very compelling case here. I love your reasoning skills.

(EDIT: although I feel it's important to point out that the evidence currently suggests the idea for the port had existed since the development of the first two, not afterwords like you are suggesting. You still made a great argument.)

 

[Misery]

It is too bad that an SNES one isnt there though, really (as in, fully complete and playable). Yeah Action 52 was not a good product, but it's still darned funny and for the right sort of player... the sort that enjoys janky stuff like that... it can definitely be fun. Heck, there are people that speedrun it... that's quite the odd spectacle, I tell ya that.

On a side note, this topic overall makes me think of a sorta similar topic: releases/media that arent "lost", but instead are somehow very broken, or very strange. Things that make you go "but y tho" or maybe just "how did THAT happen?"

Action 52 itself does fit there, as does something like Big Rigs (PS2). Or my personal favorite example, Little Red Hood on the NES. I mean, that one... what the heck. What even is that cartridge? Why does it look like that? Well, I could ask "why" for every single aspect of the game really. The AVGN episode for it was hilarious. I keep meaning to try the game myself, chances are I have the ROM somewhere.

Or there's the "Froggo" releases on the Atari 2600. Only in that specific era could a publisher of any sort have gotten away with THAT.

I'm sure there's weird TV & movie & whatever releases too. And Youtube, there's definitely a LOT of things that fall into this category on there.