- today
Daredevil for PS2 would've been something special.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Lost Media is undeniably intriguing.
00:03After all, the big hits and misses alike are etched into video game history for all to look back on,
00:08but what about the games that almost didn't make it at all?
00:11I'm Si for WhatCulture.com and here are 10 Lost video games that were discovered years later.
00:17Number 10, Echo 2, Sentinels of the Universe.
00:20Sega developed a host of memorable franchises in the early 90s that included Sonic the Hedgehog,
00:24Alex Kidd, Streets of Rage, and perhaps the most overlooked of them all, Echo the Dolphin.
00:29Between 1992 and 1995, the franchise had three installments that all received rather consistent critical and commercial acclaim.
00:36When Sega braved new waters with the Dreamcast system,
00:39the majority of their established IPs never got a chance to shine on their 128-bit machine.
00:44However, Echo was one of the few that made it across with the 2000 reboot Defender of the Future.
00:50Again, there were rave reviews, and as such developers Appaloosa Interactive got to work on a follow-up.
00:55However, fans had no idea that this was even the case for years,
00:58as the sequel was cancelled before it was even announced thanks to the Dreamcast's unfortunate discontinuation.
01:05A prototype was discovered in 2007, but it took another 9 years before a copy was released to the public.
01:11Echo 2, Sentinels of the Universe looks impressive for a game at a suggested 30% completion,
01:16but it's hard to know how it would have turned out for sure considering how much is missing.
01:20However, Sentinels of the Universe is of particular note, because aside from the 2002 PS2 port of Defender of the Future,
01:27Sega's bottlenose friend has otherwise been lost at sea for 23 years in counting.
01:32Number 9, Lobo.
01:33If you're a more casual fan of DC comic book characters, you might be at least aware of Lobo,
01:38thanks to his appearance as a DLC fighter in Injustice Gods Among Us.
01:42However, if it wasn't for its ultimate cancellation, this wouldn't have been Lobo's first video game brawler.
01:47After Lobo's unexpected growth in popularity in the 90s, Ocean Software picked up the license
01:51and put a team to work on constructing a fighting game starring the violent alien and a series of his enemies.
01:57Lobo was undoubtedly inspired by Killer Instinct's pre-rendered graphics and the success of Mortal Kombat,
02:02as each character had a violent finishing move as described in a few gaming magazines at the time.
02:07However, despite the marketing starting up, the game never released.
02:10There was talk of prototype Lobo cartridges existing in collector's forums for years,
02:15but it took over a decade for ROMs of both the Mega Drive and Super Nintendo versions of the game to appear online in 2008 and 2009.
02:23The quality of these is surprisingly high, making it untimely cancellation sting for fans of the genre and the character.
02:29It remains the only official Lobo video game to this day, even in its unofficially released state.
02:358. Radical Dreamers
02:37Nintendo have taken part in quite a few odd hardware and software experiments over the years,
02:41but the Satellaview is truly out there.
02:44Essentially a cable modem attached to the SNES,
02:46this Japan-exclusive peripheral allowed gamers to tune in at certain times of the day
02:50for unique gaming experiences that would otherwise never be made available.
02:54One of these was Radical Dreamers, a 1996 visual novel adventure game
02:58that was a surprisingly weird choice for a sequel to one of the all-time JRPG greats, Chrono Trigger.
03:04Radical Dreamers stars Kid and Surge from the sequel Chrono Cross,
03:07as well as an amnesiac version of Magus from Chrono Trigger called Magi.
03:12Luca from Chrono Trigger also gets a mention as meeting her untimely fate in general,
03:16the story is a darker departure from the other entries in the series.
03:20Although more forgotten than technically lost, this timed experience local to Japan remained an oddity that most people didn't even know existed.
03:26Square avoided reissuing the game for a long time due to its incongruous tone with the rest of the series
03:32and what they called questionable demand.
03:34Thankfully, rom-dumps in the 2000s allowed Western fans a taste of Radical Dreamers
03:38before the company finally acquiesced and released it in 2022 as part of a re-release of Chrono Cross.
03:45Number 7, Resident Evil for the Game Boy Color.
03:47Sigh, talking about Resident Evil on this channel, all of our subscribers saw this coming, does that include you?
03:53There aren't many consoles from 1996 onwards that don't have some kind of Resident Evil game on them.
03:58Whilst it hasn't been brought forward for quite some time, the original Resident Evil had three releases for the PlayStation,
04:04shambled its way onto the Sega Saturn and PC, and eventually took a bite out of the Nintendo DS in 2006.
04:10This final note is particularly important because A, Deadly Silence is the best version of the game Fight Me,
04:16and B, it marks a happy ending to a tumultuous story of trying to make Resident Evil an on-the-go experience.
04:22Capcom producer Yoshiki Okamoto was attracted to handheld gaming which had served Nintendo well through the 90s,
04:28hitting another boom nearing the turn of the millennium thanks to Pokemon and the Game Boy Color.
04:32Capcom hired UK team Hot Gen, led by Fergus McGovern, who had previously worked at Probe Entertainment
04:37and had experience in porting arcade games to home consoles.
04:40In what is surely one of the most ambitious but doomed ports of all time,
04:44moving Resident Evil from PlayStation to Game Boy Color was a remarkable ask.
04:48Early screenshots looked promising in how faithful they were, but the release missed several deadlines and then hit the wall of cancellation.
04:54In 2012, different prototypes of the game were dropped online which confirmed just how ambitious and how doomed the project was.
05:02It's clear that Resident Evil on Game Boy Color was never going to work, but it's marvellous that something so bold even existed at all.
05:096. Steven Seagal is the final option
05:12Michael Jackson had Moonwalker, Shaq had Shaq-Fu, and Steven Seagal nearly had the final option.
05:18In the mid-90s, TechMagic, rather than get a license to any of Steven Seagal's films,
05:22decided to craft a brand new side-scrolling beat-'em-up adventure for the direct-to-video star.
05:27However, Seagal's involvement with the game was minimal, essentially boiling down to selling his likeness.
05:32The rotoscoped character the player takes control of is just a look-alike.
05:35Despite this, Steve Wick, who worked on the game and went on to develop for the Postal series,
05:39said in an interview with Nintendo Player that the company ran out of money, which led to the game's cancellation.
05:44TechMagic, meanwhile, announced that the final option was scrapped in favour of a different Seagal game for PlayStation and N64,
05:50which, unsurprisingly, also never came to be.
05:53Regardless, a prototype version of the final option got into the hands of an editor at Tips & Tricks magazine,
05:58making its way through several eBay auctions until it found a preservationist.
06:02The game, originally scheduled for a 1994 release, became publicly accessible in 2013,
06:07becoming another weird footnote in the career of a severely weird actor.
06:115. Bad Dream Adventure
06:14Bad Dream Adventure is a unique example on this list of a game that did get an official release but still wound up lost.
06:20Because the game's publisher, Toshiba EMI, decided to halt CD-ROM production in general,
06:25only 3,000 copies of Garage were originally made.
06:28This made it exceptionally rare and expensive,
06:30and owners of the game were hesitant to upload it to the internet for fear of Japanese piracy laws.
06:35Garage's strange psychological tone made it feel especially elusive compared to other lost games.
06:40The 1999 point-and-click horror is set inside the mind of a man named Yang,
06:44shown as a capitalist nightmare world populated by biomechanical beings.
06:48The game's art style feels inspired by the works of H.R. Giger and Junji Ito.
06:52Preservation of Garage came about via a committed group of fans who had discovered the game's existence
06:57and began hunting through online Japanese auctions.
07:00In 2014, a user called CC0 secured a copy for 77,000 yen, roughly $550, and put the game online.
07:08This prompted an English fan patch to be made years later,
07:11allowing those who had fallen in love with the twisted world to enjoy it properly.
07:14In 2021, thanks likely in part to the passion around its search those years ago,
07:19Garage got its first official release in 20 years for iOS and Android.
07:234. Aka R
07:25There are a great many arcade classics lost to time and plenty of urban legends around them.
07:29Aka R is one game that was unobtainable for a long time for both fans and the company who paid to create it.
07:36In early 1982, development on Atari's space shooter Aka R wrapped,
07:40and a cabinet was sent to an arcade in Florida to see how it tested with consumers.
07:44Unfortunately, it was also sent alongside Robotron 2084, which smoked its contemporary,
07:50causing Aka R to make next to no money.
07:52As such, the game was cancelled and full production was never pursued.
07:56Only three cabinets were ever made, and the private owners of the Aka R cabs never uploaded the ROM to the internet,
08:01denying most of the public the chance to ever play it.
08:04However, in 2019, the game was dumped anonymously on an arcade forum.
08:08Allegedly, the ROM had been stolen by a tech who had visited the home of one of the private collectors.
08:13This is pretty grim, if true.
08:15However, now that the ROM had been released,
08:17those who had spent decades wondering about it could see it for themselves.
08:21Additionally, Atari, who had no backup of the game, also finally had access to it.
08:25As such, it appears as part of the celebratory collection Atari 50,
08:29finally at home amongst its peers.
08:31Number 3, Daredevil the Man Without Fear
08:34Before Arkham Asylum revolutionized superhero video games single-handedly,
08:38we had Treyarch's PS2 Spider-Man titles, often still described as some of the best comic book video games ever.
08:45However, Spidey was not meant to swing through the gaming sphere alone.
08:48In the early 2000s, developers' 5,000 foot pitch for a Daredevil game was approved by Marvel,
08:53and they began in earnest on their first open world adventure.
08:56The titular hero was able to complete side missions on the way to his main objectives,
09:00using a shadow world to take advantage of Daredevil's senses to find enemies and heat sources.
09:05Apparently, the development of Daredevil was pretty rough,
09:08in particular as it morphed over time with the announcement of the Ben Affleck-led film entering production.
09:13This meant Producers Encore, Marvel, and Sony Pictures all required approvals on everything the studio did.
09:19There was an engine switch, the open world was scrapped in favour of being a linear brawler,
09:23costs ballooned, and there were even alleged drug abuse allegations at the studio.
09:28In 2020, video game preservationist Peter Pete Online uploaded a video of the 2003 build of Daredevil,
09:34which reignited interest. Then, three years later, a 2004 build was discovered.
09:39Fans worked together to make this version best described as somewhat finished,
09:43playable, unearthing a gem from nearly 20 years ago that most people forgot ever existed.
09:482. Drax Knight Out
09:50Drax Knight Out is a good-humoured little adventure game for the NES,
09:53where the player assists Dracula in leaving his tower and navigating the town below.
09:57Drax must avoid or trap villagers and suck their blood while searching for his bride Mina.
10:02It's simple, charming fun, never actually released.
10:05The game was expected to drop in 1991, but despite being almost ready, it never made it to store shelves.
10:11This is particularly odd as it was also tied up in a licensing agreement.
10:15Midway through development, the producer Parker Brothers had struck a deal with Reebok.
10:18As such, the game became a tie-in for Reebok Pumps, which Drax can pick up on his travels for extra speed and, of course, early 90s style.
10:26What's remarkable about this story is how the game was preserved.
10:30It just so happened that Parker Brothers developer Rex Bradford lived on the same street as NES fan Gideon G,
10:35who would borrow the near-final version of the game's cartridge as a kid and would wind up keeping it.
10:40As he grew up and got into video game emulation and preservation, G realised he had something special in his collection
10:46and made sure the game got online nearly a decade after it was supposed to be released.
10:511. Akira for the Sega Mega Drive
10:54Considering the worldwide cultural impact of it, it's surprising that there haven't been more attempts at turning 1988 motion picture Akira into video games.
11:02The Japanese Famicom title was poorly received, but there was an attempt made by THQ in the early 90s to bring Neo Tokyo to a variety of platforms.
11:10Mega Drive, Sega CD, Game Gear, SNES and Game Boy.
11:13These were shown to gamers in magazines and briefly at the 1994 Summer Consumer Electronic Show before vanishing without a trace.
11:20Behind the scenes, each version of the game was being cut one by one, with the Mega Drive version making it the furthest before also being axed.
11:28And so the game became lost media for two decades until Boxing Day of 2019, appropriately the year the film is set,
11:34when a prototype of the Mega Drive version was uploaded to the internet.
11:38Gamers would finally get a good look at Akira, even if it was only semi-complete,
11:42to find that its contents are as wide a net as the original choice of systems.
11:46Each level bounces from one genre to the next, driving, first-person doom-like exploration, side-scrolling adventure, isometric combat and so on.
11:54It's an appropriately audacious direction for audacious source material featuring some stunning cutscenes for the time,
12:00and in retrospect could have been a late-era Mega Drive classic if it had made it over the finish line.
12:05Thank goodness we can play these video games again, because sometimes that's not always the case.
12:10Speaking of which, there's a video on screen now for 10 video game moments that you'll never see again.
12:14Thanks for watching, I've been Sy for WhatCulture, and have a good week.
Recommended
16:36
|
Up next
10:09
2:56
2:25
9:39
11:10