Current Events > What's a lost media holy grail for you?

(+) Yeah! (+)

In the Halloween mood, I'd probably go with the original demo and full lyrics of Maniac by Michael Sembello. Before it was picked for Flashdance, it was originally about a serial killer.

He's a maniac, maniac, on the floor.
And he'll kill your cat and nail it to the door / And his mannequin wears the scalp of a whore

That movie where Sinbad plays a genie

It's not particularly prestigious, but I'd like to find the Alfy's World games.

The 97 missing episodes of Doctor Who.

Even though I'm not the biggest Dr. Who fan, its the lost season that got caught up in a fire. If we are expanding that outside of media, there was a brand of sour licorice bites I've been craving the past 20 years that I can't get anymore.

Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah verses.

Resident Evil 4's castle beta. All of Resident Evil 4's (going back to when it was actually Resident Evil 3), actually.

Actually, I want to change my answer. During the original FF14 beta there were a bunch of locations that game had that were never used afterwards.

Ivany2008 posted...

Even though I'm not the biggest Dr. Who fan, its the lost season that got caught up in a fire. If we are expanding that outside of media, there was a brand of sour licorice bites I've been craving the past 20 years that I can't get anymore.

What do you mean by lost season? Doctor Who is missing 97 episodes across the first 6 seasons, but it's not missing any season in full. And it's not due to a fire, it's that they just that they routinely got rid of stuff from their archives back in the day.

Garioshi posted...

Resident Evil 4's castle beta. All of Resident Evil 4's (going back to when it was actually Resident Evil 3), actually.

I remember seeing a youtube video about that. Like there were possessed dolls and stuff? It would have been a very different game.

rick_alverado posted...

What do you mean by lost season? Doctor Who is missing 97 episodes across the first 6 seasons, but it's not missing any season in full. And it's not due to a fire, it's that they just that they routinely got rid of stuff from their archives back in the day.

The story I heard was one season was missing from the BBC due to a fire at the production studio. Obviously I heard wrong.

The SNES build of Wing Commander II

Mess o' Blues, the original concept for Johnny Bravo when it was about a trio of Elvis impersonators. Van Partible has it, but refuses to share it.

The recently axed Batgirl movie.

The Box by Orbital

Its a 27 minute electronic song with 4 parts that was only available on the UK bonus CD for the album InSides. The full song isnt available for streaming anywhere.

nes prototypes and concept art from games we dont even know existed, or maybe they have a few magazine ads but no one remembers them cause they got cancelled

Cats with buttholes.

Event Horizon Director's Cut.

It doesn't keep me up at night or anything, but it's the first to spring to mind.

Crash Twinsanity beta builds

There's a lost Jimmy Hendrix concept album. Wouldn't mind hearing that.

The feature length movie adaptation of "He's Alive"

It was never fully finished but they did film a little bit.

'90s Star Trek LaserDiscs are endangered media.

Will be essential in order to archive these in "better than VHS/DVD" quality if the raw stream can be extracted. And yes, that's actually better than what the LaserDiscs player can output.

Bunch of canned games including the PS1 build of Onimusha, Survivor: Day One

London After Midnight

hivebent4life posted...

Crash Twinsanity beta builds

this is a great one

Not exactly lost media, but Ive tried for many many years to find a decent quality version of The New Adventures of Gigantor (aired on Sci-Fi channel in the 90s) to no avail. Ive got some crappy version thats obviously just a VHS rip plopped on burnable DVDs and even that was hard to find.

More than Voltron or Power Rangers, I cite it as my reason for liking giant robot/mecha shows.

Ufotable Touhou short. Even though it's basically just an ad for some store I still want to see it.

I will say that I've tried to find copies of Beat the Geeks, the trivia show from the 2000s. No place sells it and even the bay doesn't have it in its waters.

The infamous "woman calls 911 and gets murdered" call that was used as training, but it turned out that Ruth Price WASN'T killed during the 911 call and would go on to live another 10-15 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow51T-M6oYA

And the lost song "Ulterior Motives" being found and it's whole back story story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ1ULKmiYCY

A lot of broadcast TV audio from the 50s-70s would be lost if not for my brother-in-law's father.

MGS4 for Xbox 360

It's not really lost, just mostly forgotten, but as a small kid I friggin loved the Mind's Eye videos.

If you've never seen them, it was a collection of random CGI demo videos someone spliced together and overlaid a soundtrack on. They are trippy

https://youtu.be/cmE4IWPaULE?si=asKsKHvDHELwjl_2

Thinking back.... the one thing that I wish actually bloomed into fruition was Euclideons Unlimited Detail. Nothing ever came from it, but it was fascinating for its time. I think the company that started it was a scam company. I really hope at some point someone takes up the technology and reverse engineers it.

rick_alverado posted...

The 97 missing episodes of Doctor Who.

This. Luckily, news just broke the other day that at least 3 episodes (possibly more) are known to be in the hands of private collectors and work is underway to get those episodes returned to the BBC so we may get some new returns soon!

Oh and I think a handful of scenes from Metropolis are still missing. That was true a few years ago, last time I checked, anyway.

The Phantom Blood movie

Ivany2008 posted...

Even though I'm not the biggest Dr. Who fan, its the lost season that got caught up in a fire. If we are expanding that outside of media, there was a brand of sour licorice bites I've been craving the past 20 years that I can't get anymore.

That being said, the fact that they killed off Shockers hurts my soul more than any lost media

The scrapped EarthBound 64; aka original Mother 3 game.

I might take a stab at the Phantom Blood movie. I have a very good idea of where I could find it.

VincentVega posted...

This. Luckily, news just broke the other day that at least 3 episodes (possibly more) are known to be in the hands of private collectors and work is underway to get those episodes returned to the BBC so we may get some new returns soon!

It's been known for quite some time that at least some of the missing episodes are in the hands of private collectors, but last I heard there wasn't any progress on getting any of them returned to the BBC. If that's changed, that is wonderful news.

rick_alverado posted...

It's been known for quite some time that at least some of the missing episodes are in the hands of private collectors, but last I heard there wasn't any progress on getting any of them returned to the BBC. If that's changed, that is wonderful news.

He's an interview clip with the organization working on the recovery with some more information.

https://youtu.be/5kqEqRxFQzI?si=4kwKfDebkMySdrkQ

The 3 hour version of Gorillaz Plastic Beach

Megaman Universe, I wanna know how far along it was when it was cancelled.

I love lost media and follow it every so often, so I got three. One light-hearted one that I'm personally attached to, and two that are morbid curiosities (emphasis on the morbid part).

The first one is the Fox Kids version of King of the Hill. Around 97-ish there was bizarre tie-in promotion called "Fox Kids Heads For The Hills", it featured commercial bumpers promoting King of the Hill and the Silver Surfer as "new neighbors".
https://youtu.be/h1FLRlVnHJQ?si=ozk8tpeBQq5GCcpK

This was 1000% real, I watched on TV when it happened.

They aired certain episodes either on the block, or directly after. One episode in question was the one where the kids got stuck in the cave.

This is interesting because while KoTH is extremely tame and not really something most parents would bother shielding their kids from, it's also decidedly an adult show with a lot adult subject matter. Recordings of the actual episodes that aired are completly lost so we have no idea if they were edited or censored in any way.

I have such a strong attachment to finding this because, to my knowledge, I was actually the first person who brought this up to the lost media community and even authored that (honestly, poorly written) article that stayed on the Lost Media Wiki site for several years. I'm pretty sure me writing the article was why someone dug up the promos as that happened only a few months later.

Someone also found some Fox network notes describing why they did this, it turned out it was as simple as kids just seemed to like the show.

Unfortunately with all this evidence, a lot of people refuse to beleive the promotion even happened and article is now removed from LMW and that copy of the network notes is ironically lost as a result. :/

I will die on the Hill (pun intended) that it was absolutely something that happened because I saw it.

The other two I'm less confident about but have some interest in them regardless.

Saki Sanobashi / Go For A Punch.
I think it's real, and I have a theory for why it's so buried. I also think the people trying to dig it up might regret finding it if I'm correct.

It sounds like a creepy pasta, but there is some absolutely fucked up 80's no-budget anime and that's a rabbit hole that only gets worse.

Lol Superman (lost 9/11 footage).
Again, I think it exists simply because it makes too much sense that it does. Too much was recorded on that day.

While on the subject of Fox Kids, there's also the "very special episode" of Power Rangers about the Oklahoma City bombing.

It was hosted by John Walsh and was basically just a discussion on the set of the Juice Bar, and it was about how to discern real life destructive tragedies with fantasy violence with kids.

Even as a kid, I could it was basically the Fox Network trying to cover their asses in case media watchdog groups complained about a show that features buildings exploding every episode.

The first TV sitcom in the United States which aired in the late forties called Mary Kay and Johnny. Only two episodes of 300 are thought to still exist, and both belong to private collectors who refuse to air them to the public. A full episode has never been rebroadcasted.

VincentVega posted...

He's an interview clip with the organization working on the recovery with some more information.

https://youtu.be/5kqEqRxFQzI?si=4kwKfDebkMySdrkQ

Interesting, fingers crossed this yields some good results. I think this is different than the stuff I've heard about in the past, which is collectors outside the UK, while this seems to be collectors inside the UK.

The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays (1908)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fairylogue_and_Radio-Plays

The first Wizard of Oz film and quite a technical and artistic feat. It was apparently 120 minutes long and hand colored. Quite insane for such a long film. It also has the 1st known original film score. We take concrete film music for granted, but it took over 15 years of film history to create a true film score instead of just having some people just play music over the film.

Basement Cuts, Insane Clown Posse (at that time called "Inner City Posse")

I find myself fascinated by the Satelleview.

SNES peripheral, only in Japan, players used it to download small games and apps over a broadcast.
You could save a limited amount locally, and some things survived, but parts of the media are either lost or scattered.
There was also a hub area with characters and time-limited events and the like, those are hard to reproduce as well.

As grim as it is, curiosity has me. WWE Over The Edge 99.