What "Lost Media" are you interested in?

There is a version of Windows XP that was only released in Japan that is even more or less rarer than the Starter Edition releases in many countries. This version of Windows XP is referred to as "Windows XP 20th Anniversary edition".

This version of Windows XP was released by Microsoft in Japan on December 9th 2005 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the first Windows version (Windows 1.0 to be exact), and it came with replica installation CDs of Windows 95, 98, Me and 2000 (All of which that aren't supposed to work), Windows box origami, memorial stamps, memorial stickers, a memorial video from the man himself, and a special early "preview" version of Windows Vista. Microsoft in Japan also handed out freebies to a few lucky individuals. Fifty people would've been able to get in on the Windows Vista technical Beta, 20 would've got their packages autographed by Bill Gates, 150 would've been entered into a drawing for a frame for storing the discs, and 5 people would've got a free trip to tour Microsoft's headquarters out in Redmond, Washington. 

Sadly, only 9,999 copies of this release are known to have been made, and any other information regarding this release is scarce, and whatever the CD-ROM contents includes other than the Windows XP operating system itself isn't currently known for right now.

The Tenth Planet Episode 4 is probably the holy grail of missing Doctor Who episodes. William Hartnell's final episode as the Doctor, the first ever regeneration, and the first appearance of the Cybermen. Episodes 1-3 still exist so E4 would complete the story. Weirdly enough it was never actually destroyed: it just disappeared at some point and nobody knows where it went. So it's entirely possible that it's still out there, somewhere.

A couple of years ago they did a nice callback story with David Bradley playing the now-deceased Hartnell, including reshooting some lost scenes:

Very specific, and very un-doomy, but there's this magical girl show called Heartcatch Pretty Cure that had its movie dubbed into French for some reason??? And it's now my life goal to find it. This is the only piece of Pretty Cure media that was every released in French before they subbed the modern seasons about a year ago.

Apparently, there is a console that alot of you heard about that was integrated on some DVD player models by RCA, Samsung, Toshiba & to a less extant Motorola. That console is of course the Nuon.

This console not only played games, but also had potential for enhanced exclusive features for movies on that console. Unfortunately, only eight games & four movies were released on the Nuon. A couple more games & movies were planned, but were never released due to lack of proper third party support, and competition from the 6th-gen consoles (Sega's Dreamcast, Nintendo's Gamecube, Microsoft's Xbox & Sony's PlayStation 2).

A few of the planned games & movies were as follows:

Those are the games & movies that were planned to be released on the Nuon, but were never released due to the above mentioned reasons. There might be other planned games & movies for the Nuon, but these are the ones that are currently known.

definitely shit like the apocalypse now workprint the scenes that were cut out of the base film were so weird and out there I recommended anyone hunt it down and watch it. Dawn of the dead has so many cuts so a while back I found a mall hours cut that puts together all 3 cuts in a 155 minute version it was a fan edit and done very well, but its hard as shit to get these days the websites are all down and the only way to get it is from some dodgy sites, but imo its totally worth it. Fallout 3 the original interplay unreleased version is really interesting to me I love every single fallout game but prolly spent the most time in fallout 2 and new vegas, I still fuckin love the fallout 3 we got but I'm kinda sad we didn't get the van buren version.

Similarly, many movies & TV shows around 2001-2002 were also edited in response to the September 11th Attacks. Music also had been impacted by the attacks, though most of their content was mostly unedited beyond altering album cover art & Clear Channel Communications' (now iHeartMedia) memorandum on songs that weren't recommended to be played on their radio stations.

Similar to what I've mentioned with video games being edited after 9/11, reasons for TV shows & Movies being edited between 2001-2002 included the removal of the World Trade Center towers or other similar buildings, removal of sensitive imagery (airplane crashes, large explosions, terror & bomb plots, etc), & delayed broadcast airings (premierings & release dates). Many TV shows & Movies released during the 1980s & 1990s (and in rare cases the year 2000) also had some editing after the attacks, but these edits were minor in many cases.

However, not all TV shows or movies were edited after the attacks, with most movies released in 2001-2002 retaining the World Trade Center towers if they were filmed in the months before the attacks, such is the case with the 2001 Tom Cruise movie Vanilla Sky.

You might want to visit Wikipedia's page on entertainment affected by the attacks for more info, as putting a list on TV shows & movies affected by the attacks would be too much time for me.

I want to know where the video of Rayman singing "Sex Bomb" by Tom Jones came from. It's like reverse lost media, we have it, but we have no clue who made it - besides the possibility of being made by the actual developers of the Rayman games - and how it got on the internet.

On 2/17/2021 at 4:56 PM, Ar_e_en said:

There are two Youtubers that I watched a long long time ago that just fell off the face of the earth. They both have one thing in common - both did (or were doing at the time) Let's Plays of Hexen (one even mentions the other in one of the Hexen videos).

 

One is "SunTheTiger" - He was doing a Let's Play of the Korax Mod for Hexen with the Mage class. He still has a Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/SunTheTiger), but all the videos are unlisted or just flat out deleted. I guess he just lost interest in making videos and just deleted them all.

 

In one of the Hexen videos - SunTheTiger says that the reason why he plays as the Mage for the Let's Play series is because the other Hexen playing Youtuber already did a series of Vanilla Hexen with the Cleric (or maybe it was the Fighter?). The other Youtuber being "ErikkTehDestroyer" (yes, I that's how his username was spelled). Erikk did a playthrough of Hexen, Hexen 2, Wolfenstein 3D, Startropics 1 & 2, A Tetris parody game called "Tetris: Charity Edition" (which was my favorite video of his), and many more things! His Youtube channel is gone, there are no more videos of his online, and I don't think that we will ever find any of his videos again to be honest. In fact, I remember watching a random video from a different Youtuber that basically listed the most noteworthy First Person Shooters from the 90's to the 2000's, and as stock footage for the Hexen segment - the guy used audio-less video from Erikks Hexen Let's Play. That video is also gone! I don't know what happened to Erikk, I don't even have any theories. It's just a mystery  to me!

IIRC years ago, Erikk played Hexen with the Cleric in the base game Beyond Heretic, and he played the Fighter in the expansion pack Death Kings of the Dark Citadel.  Yeah I don't know what happened to Erikk either, nor do I have any theories. Still remains a mystery to what happened to "ErikkTehDestroyer".

@Wadmodder Shalton

Nice to know that somebody else also remembers Erikk!

Just a few moments ago - I remembered another Let's Player that I watched a long time ago, decided to check their channel to see if they are still around - channel still exists, but the videos are all gone. We might have another piece of lost media here.

I'm talking about an Earthbound Let's Player named "MasterwabbitMW". He was my first exposure to Earthbound. He also had one video where he drew 10 Homer Simpsons in like 1 minute or something like that.

This is the only footage I could find of "MasterwabbitMW":

We all know that the 1984 game Birthday Mania for the Atari 2600 was the insanely rare game that wasn't dumped onto the internet for years until 2019. It turns out a few extras might exist for a game that's extremely rare, that game of course is the 1983 game Red Sea Crossing.

This game was advertised on some magazines in the year of the Video Game Crash of 1983, and it's estimated that 100 copies were produced yet only two copies have been discovered by collectors, so it's unknown what happened to the other 98 copies of the game. According to the advertising for the game it was to come with a coloring book & an audio tape/cassette but these have yet to also resurface.

There's also this Atari 2600 game with very little information available, that game is called Cosmic. That game was likely released by two companies, SpaceVision, who released it in Australia, and Choplifter/Space Harrier, who released it in Thailand. It's unknown what the game is supposed to look like.

There's one company that released a couple of games for the Atari 8-bit computer systems in the early-1980s that is very hard to document, that company is Aim Software.

They have presumably published about 56 games alongside 15 unconfirmed games. Out of all of those games, only 24 of them have been dumped so far, and some of them are only known to have been put on tape, or disk instead of both. This company is even more obscure than the infamous European publisher Phoenix Games (which had at least one game unreleased, a Pac-Man clone named "Paccie") and the chances of the remaining games they published are currently slim for now.

Those are some of the games for Atari's 1970s & 1980s systems that I can think of for right now.

I've also remembered WildTangent from my mid to late 2000s childhood, as many of those games were preinstalled on computers by HP (and then subsidiary Compaq), Dell, Acer (and then subsidiaries Gateway & eMachines) Toshiba, Sony, among others. However, many of WildTangent's earlier games made between 1998 to 2007 are lost and have yet to resurface.

Also notable to be mentioned here is the 3D Groove games by The Groove Alliance, a company active between 1998 to 2009. Many of these games were lost when the company closed it's doors.

There also a few TV Game subscription services on old Cable, Satellite & other TV services that were short lived with nothing surviving except for images & videos of those games. These services included:

Austar Gameworld - active between 2007 to 2009

DirecTV Game Lounge - active between 2007 to 2013

Disney Channel Interactive - active during the late-2000s

LodgeNet - a game service offering SNES, Nintendo 64 & Gamecube and even Game Boy (maybe even GBC & GBA) games, active between the mid-1990s to Mid-2000s

Videoway Canadian cable-box games - active between 1990 to 2006

There's also quite alot of browser games that were lost even before the discontinuation of Adobe Flash from websites that went defunct before the End-of-life announcement in July 2017. These websites include but not limited to:

Deeqs.com - browser games from 2008 to 2017, an online campaign by Dairy Queen

Funbrain.com - it's still around but the first half of the Fun Arcade are accessible on the Wayback Machine, but the second half of the Fun Arcade was never completed.

Nabiscoworld - browser games from 1999 to 2013

PokéMon.com - many browser games from the pre-2010/2011 era

Postopia - many browser games between 2001 to 2011

PBS Kids PLAY! - an interactive edutainment gaming site active between the 2000s until 2015, when the website closed due to "outdated technologies" meaning it used Adobe Flash Player and other obsolete web browser plug-in technologies.

Stickdeath.com - browser games from 1996 to late-2000s & 2013 to 2016

VeggieTales.com - browser games from 2011 to 2013

YTV.com - browser games from 1998 to 2006

There's also a number of games from these defunct PC gaming services, these are Nick Arcade, Disney Games Downloads & Cartoon Network Power Play. These were active in between the early to late 2000s, and were defunct by the late-2000s, causing these games to be lost.

There's quite a lot of unknown companies that produced that don't have a lot of information online. Two companies that I can think of include:

Edu Soft - an Argentine game company that produced pirated carts of existing Atari 2600 games throughout the 1980s to early 1990s. None of their games have been dumped online.

Karma Studios - a company founded in 1998 that released only one Game Boy Color game, with 10 addition games that the company planned to release but never had the chance to do so.

A lot of games made with the RSD Game Maker from the 1990s & later are presumably lost and are unlikely to resurface. In addition, alot of IBM PC, MS-DOS & early Windows (especially those from the Windows 3.x & Windows 9x eras) ports of many games listed on

Most Wanted Games DOS & Old-Games.ru that were presumably released are lost and have yet to resurface.

Here's links to both of these websites:

http://agamenon3.blogspot.com.au/p/most-wanted-games-dos.html

http://www.old-games.ru/wiki/Ненайденные_игры,_нужные_для_сайта

There's even a few games for these obscure game consoles that haven't been dumped online. Two systems that I can think are as follows:

LJN Video Art - a console released in 1987 that focused on drawing art on the television. Had at least nine games released, but these are extremely rare and haven't been dumped online. The console itself hasn't been emulated yet.

Bit Corperation Gamate - a Game Boy Rip-off handheld console released in 1990 & discontinued around 1994, which had around 60 games released for the system but not all of them have been preserved & dumped, with a few that are presumed to have been released or unreleased.

These are some of the other gaming related things I can think of that I'm interested in.

im kinda fascinated with old-school collectible card games. so many of them got cancelled around 1996-97 and I bet the creators are sitting on rules text for unreleased planned expansions and promos and stuff. i wanna read them all.

among them there's a game that vibe with super heavily called On the Edge, based on a cool rpg setting. been looking through its last official expansion, "Arcana" and thinking about where it'd have gone from there. it seems to get interesting way quicker than Magic: The Gathering did and besides a handful of cards, way less broken too - not so many big rare effects which belittle the main thrust of the game, more of a cohesive state where every part of the game matters. it having a rule that allows you to play any number of the same card should have mean it was immediately bought out and impossible to find but there were SO MANY boxes of the cards printed that you can still find them on ebay at reasonable prices <3 but I would love to know what the next level would have been.

There quite a few short & full-length films that were screened at certain film festivals in Asia, Europe & North & South America during the 1990s to 2010s that haven't been released on VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray or even Digitally, and are very hard to document. Many of them are Indie film productions and are very hard to document.

There's quite a few PC games from the 1990s & 2000s that were released but haven't been archived whatsoever. These include but not limited to:

GhostBlood - a PC fantasy role-playing game from 2003 that was included in the Last Half of Darkness Adventure game package

Gyaku Shaun Sai Hanri - A furry PC fangame of the Ace Attorney game series from 2003

Machot drives it all... aka "The First hardcore erotic Game in the world!" - a hardcore erotic game presumably released only via mail-order

NightStuD - an adult simulation PC game from 2003

Peter Box & Soko Sex - both were PC Sokoban clones programmed in 1994 by True Emotions Software

Pokémon PC Master - a Japanese educational PC game from 2006

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gold Rescue Team -Challenge the Gold Rank!-  - a South Korean downloadable PC demo version

Purevex - A PC space shooter game from 1997 that requires a PowerVR card with the proprietary direct API called "PowerSGL"

Sega Swirl 2 - A sequel to Sega Swirl released in 2006 exclusively on the now-defunct GameTap service.

Taiwan 2001 - A PC parody/homage game to the infamous Super Famicom game Hong Kong 97 that was downloadable between the 2000s until the early 2010s

The Turkish Ben 10 Games - Tie-in games for the TV show Ben 10 released exclusively in Turkey from the late-2000s to early-2010s

Also lost are early builds of Minecraft, Roblox (and it's working titles GoBlocks & Dynablocks) & Yume Nikki, with very few builds ever being found.

46 minutes ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

GhostBlood - a PC fantasy role-playing game from 2003 that was included in the Last Half of Darkness Adventure game package

I found this:

https://web.archive.org/web/20030827141208/http://www.lasthalfofdarkness.com:80/ghostblood/download.htm

11 minutes ago, Tetzlaff said:

 

I found this:

https://web.archive.org/web/20030827141208/http://www.lasthalfofdarkness.com:80/ghostblood/download.htm

Interesting, I might put a link to this game on a comment on the Lost Media Wiki's page of this game.

Well, turns out it's the demo version of GhostBlood, but the game itself is partially found at least.

The lost texts of library of Alexandria

The unreleased Chris Farley Version of Shrek is mostly lost other than production materials that have leaked over the years.

There's a set of MIDI files that are more obscure & unknown than the MIDI files of the DWANGO DOOM wads from the 1990s (which had their remaining songs identified recently) or any unidentified MIDI songs from other DOOM PWADs released between 1994 to 1996, those MIDI files I'm talking about are the MusiClips collection by Voyetra Technologies.

These were royalty-free midi songs that could be utilized on any multimedia production (such as sound cards & old PC games), and were introduced in 1991 for $149.95 and initially contained a little over 150 songs consisting mostly of public domain classical music, folk songs, and traditional holiday music, but also a few dozen custom songs of varying genres and a handful of drum tracks.

Throughout the 90s, Voyetra released supplements for $69.95 which contained additional songs and also increased the quality of the MIDI files, making them stereo.

Unfortunately, very few of the songs contained credits making it difficult to track down the composers of the original songs or the arrangers of the public domain songs. The library was eventually discontinued, possibly when Voyetra merged with Turtle Beach.

So far, no official releases of any of the MusiClips collections have surfaced, however, attempts have been made to reconstruct a complete archive from various sources. There is an archive of most but not all the MIDI files of Voyetra's MusiClips available on VGMPF.

On 4/10/2021 at 8:16 AM, Ar_e_en said:

@Wadmodder Shalton

Nice to know that somebody else also remembers Erikk!

Also, IIRC years ago ErikkTehDestroyer played the Paladin in his Hexen 2 playthrough and if I also remembered years ago, he mentioned that black creature at the ending text screen of Hexen II was likely a good or bad guy (maybe that's supposed to be the Demoness from Portal of Praevus, which Erikk likely never played?), and also he mentioned both that were wasn't a Hexen III and that an old DOOM 3 mod was in the works which was called Hexen: Edge of Chaos (which would be abandoned years after ErikkTehDestroyer disappeared from YouTube). Other than that, I don't think anybody else here knows what happened to ErikkTehDestroyer, and anyone else here doesn't likely have any theories either on the mystery of Erikk's disappearance.

There's quite a handful of silent films that have since been lost or have disappeared without any traces of copies in existence.

Three filmmakers I can think of from the silent era are Georges Méliès, Alice Guy-Blaché & M.H. (Machiel Hendricus) Laddé. 

For Georges Méliès, roughly 200 out of over 500 films he produced have survived. For Alice Guy-Blaché, 350 out of over 1,000 she produced have survived. For M.H. Laddé sadly none of his four films he produced have survived.

Among the most sought after & lost films are the ones that were the victims of vault fires. The most famous ones include the 1924 Universal Pictures vault fire, the 1937 Fox vault fire & the 1965 MGM vault fire, all of which occurred in the 20th-century.

On 4/20/2021 at 4:47 AM, Wadmodder Shalton said:

There's a set of MIDI files that are more obscure & unknown than the MIDI files of the DWANGO DOOM wads from the 1990s (which had their remaining songs identified recently) or any unidentified MIDI songs from other DOOM PWADs released between 1994 to 1996, those MIDI files I'm talking about are the MusiClips collection by Voyetra Technologies.

 

Speaking of MIDI files:

There is a floppy disk from Roland that contains midi versions of King Crimson songs. It was sold at an auction in Japan. I know that there exist countless MIDI renditions of KC songs on the web (which is surprising considering the magical scorched earth powers of Mr Fripp), but a possible collection from the 90's (or maybe even the early 2000's) of KC MIDI files that were released by a company well known for their digital music endeavors? That is special!

Unfortunately, I can't find much about this floppy online. No rips, no song lists, nothing! This tweet is the only thing that I can find, there might be more info on the Japanese side of the web, but I don't know any Japanese. 

On 12/9/2020 at 4:37 AM, ChopBlock223 said:

I'd be interested in seeing those odd mockups Rebecca Heineman mentioned from the development of Doom's 3DO port, supposedly something about .jpeg files which were just stuff drawn onto screenshots, which that Scott guy apparently thought was enough for just putting in the game.

Really though, any developmental content for any game or other work I'm fond of.

Do you mean those unproduced FMV cutscenes for the ill-fated 3DO version of DOOM? As scene in these mockup images:

There are also a few undumped unlicensed bootleg & pirated games for the NES/Famicom, SNES/SFC, Genesis/Mega Drive, PS1, Game Boy, GBC & GBA.

You can find a list of these undumped games on the Bootleg Games wiki:

https://bootleggames.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Undumped_Games

4 hours ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

Do you mean those unproduced FMV cutscenes for the ill-fated 3DO version of DOOM? As scene in these mockup images:

No, I vaguely recall there being mentions of new monsters and weapons as mockups. Possibly Heineman confused it with this, though.

There's quite a few Half-Life projects that were cancelled during both the GoldSrc & Source era, other than the cut content of the games.

These include but not limited to:

- Ports of Half-Life 1 to Classic Mac OS, Dreamcast, & maybe other platforms (1999 to 2002)

- Half-Life Hostile Takeover: an unreleased expansion pack planned as a Half-Life & Team Fortress crossover, that wasn't publicly announced nor had any screenshots been leaked to the public. In development in 1999 by 2015 Inc, but was cancelled in August 2000

- Arkane Studios' Ravenholm (AKA Half-Life 2 Episode 4 or Return to Ravenholm): a project being developed by Arkane Studios between 2005 to 2007, that was cancelled before The Orange Box was released

- Half-Life 2 Episode 3: a planned third & final installment of the Half-Life 2 Episodic trilogy, never went into any known development stage or ever publicly discussed by Valve

- Half-Life 3: a project rarely discussed by Valve employees that would've ran on the Source 2 engine, very little of it's development is known to the public

- Shooter: a prototype of a mini game included in the Portal Spinoff game The Lab

- Borealis: a project rarely discussed by Valve employees, that never had any known development. It's speculated that the plot of this cancelled Half-Life & Portal game project was the basis of Marc Laidlaw's short story "Epistle 3"

- there were also two unannounced Half-Life projects. The first being an untitled Half-Life 2 Episodic trilogy installment being worked on by Warren Spector of Junction Point Studio between 2005 & 2007, and the second being a project that is unknown other than six pieces of concept art leaked back in 2010-2011

Also of interest to me are any unreleased content updates for Valve's 7th-gen console ports of their games between 2007 & 2012, that were never released officially due to Valve's dislike of charging for patches & DLC for Xbox Live from Microsoft & PlayStation Network from Sony.

A few Command & Conquer games were also unreleased dating from the early-2000s to the early-2010s. These games included:

Command & Conquer: Renegade 2 - a planned sequel to C&C Renegade using an updated Westwood 3D engine.

Command & Conquer: Continuum - was to be Westwood's second MMORPG after Earth & Beyond that was cancelled after EA closed Westwood.

Command & Conquer: Tiberian Incursion (AKA Tiberian Twilight by fans) - was a third installment in the Tiberium universe in development by Westwood before their closure in 2003, some elements were reused in C&C 3:  Tiberium Wars.

Tiberium - a Tactical FPS game in development between 2006 to 2008 running on Unreal Engine, that was cancelled for not meeting the "quality standards set by the development team and the EA Games label".

Project Camacho - a RTS/FPS hybrid game in development set in the C&C Generals universe that was cancelled in 2008.

Command & Conquer: Arena - a planned multiplayer game as a spinoff of Tiberium Wars and Kane's Wrath, set in the Tiberium universe.

Command & Conquer 2013 (AKA Command & Conquer: Generals 2) - a planned game in development by Victory Games running on Frostbite 3 that was cancelled due to negative feedback during the closed alpha testing stage.

Those are some of the cancelled games in the Command & Conquer franchise that are widely known.

Renegade 2 has some interesting concept art that seems to imply that they were either trying to bring the Tiberium and Red Alert universes back together, or produced some new alternate history timeline. The sketches had some sort of post-apocalyptic look to them, and there was a cool Nod/sickle-without-hammer (IIRC) hybrid logo with the words "Unity, Brotherhood" in Russian.

I'm not sure if any of these cancelled games would turn out good though. The original Renegade was already rough enough, albeit still enjoyable, but if you look at the previews and some development shots it seems like it was supposed to be a far more ambitious game with more emphasis on stealth and depictions of large-scale military conflict (closer to what a Commando from the original C&C would experience) compared to the relatively straightforward Doom-esque FPS where you simply mow down everything that moves with a ridiculously huge arsenal of weapons.