Lost Media Follow Up 1 (FOUND) October 19, 2024

For those of you who have been following our Lost Media videos, we have some updates for you today!

Avatars Offline can be watched here. Vernon Wilmer’s Star Trek My Experience has been archived. Rest in Peace, Vernon.

Lost Media – Halo Outpost Discovery’s Ring Experience Dome Video October 14, 2024

In 2019, six cities in the United States were allowed to enter the Halo Universe for one weekend. A Halo-themed mini-convention called Halo: Outpost Discovery took place, and people who attended were able to check out interactive Halo experiences inspired by the franchise ranging from a simulator to an escape room. Today, we’re going to talk about one piece of media created specifically for the event, projected onto a custom dome screen, which covered the in-universe history of Halo, as well as shown a brand-new Halo ring inside and out.

The experience was absolutely done with respect to the franchise and despite the fact that the projector’s bulb was not set to its maximum possible brightness, the video brought this long-time Halo fan to tears. Since Outpost Discovery 2019 wrapped, no other Outpost Discovery has taken place, and the Ring Experience dome video has not made any appearances online. Let’s talk about it.

Lost Media – AT&T’s Lost EPCOT Simulator Ride July 29, 2024

Welcome back to Lost Media! Today we’re going to be discussing one of the most popular forms of LM, Theme Park Lost Media! However, today we won’t be talking about a ride that was shuttered or a show that was closed, we’ll be discussing something most people, including Disney and AT&T historians, have no idea ever existed.

the mid-90s, EPCOT’s Spaceship Earth was sponsored by AT&T, and as the sponsor they offered a unique attraction many fans of the company may not even be aware existed. A small motion simulator in front of a large screen was located in Spaceship Earth’s Network Neighborhood. If you had the chance to try it out, you’d find yourself shrunk to the size of an electron and ride across AT&T’s communication cables.

Lost Media – Final Fantasy XR March 6, 2024

Welcome back to our look into Lost Media, where we discuss gaming content that is…lost.

Did you know there was a Final Fantasy Roller Coaster? There was, for a few months in 2018 at Universal Studios Japan and it was called Final Fantasy XR. It was created to celebrate that year’s Universal Cool Japan event. It featured exclusive recognizable props and scenery, and had a full overlay with original Final Fantasy footage created in VR just for the ride. Since the coaster closed, the exclusive VR footage created for the coaster’s overlay has never been re-released and is considered lost media.

Here is our thoughts about it, and our hopes that the footage will eventually be found and re-released for current VR devices.

If anyone has access to the original VR master of the ride, please provide it to the internet archive. Currently you view the only footage we’ve been able to find about the ride from Way To Dawn, EDAMAME and Yukendoit.

Lost Media Follow Up – Sanity: Aikens Artifact (Part 1) February 29, 2024

In the year 2000, Monolith released the game Sanity: Aikens Artifact. The game was ground breaking for its time in that the developers chose to enhance the game by giving special “downloadable bonuses” which would unlock exclusive multiplayer “talents” only the players who had these abilities could use in their games. I know, doesn’t that sound like EXACTLY EVERY OTHER GAME ON THE MARKET RIGHT NOW? You’d be right, but as far as we remember, Sanity: Aiken’s Artifact may have been the first game to offer exclusive bonus DLC.

Unfortunately, nearly all promotion for the game ceased as soon as Monolith ramped up promotion for their follow up game, No One Lives Forever. Because of that, no further talents ended up getting released beyond the initial few, despite talks that a lot more were expected to come out. In the 20 years since the game came out, Sanity: Aiken’s Artifact has never seen a re-release, and iit was believed those DLC bonus talents have been lost forever. Here’s an update on what has found in the time since he first talked about preordering the game back in the day.

Lost Media – Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII February 22, 2024

Maniac tells a story about a Final Fantasy VII spin off most of you have never heard of, but would’ve been revolutionary if it actually came out.

Before Crisis was an episodic RPG/visual novel which released in 2003 for Mobile Phones. If a leaflet I was passed to at E3 could be believed, there were plans to offer it for sale here in the US, but the generally poor quality of our country’s cell phones of the time likely put an end to that chance. Sadly, it never came out in the US, and the central server required to play the game in Japan was shut down many years ago.

So what was this game and why is it considered Lost Media? Watch and find out!

Lost Media – Halo 2’s E3 2003 Introduction Video January 16, 2024

Maniac attended his first E3 in 2003, and it was at the time 3 of the best days of his life where he created memories he will forever cherish. However, a major memory of the event has never been reuploaded in the past 20 years (in its entirety). Most people are aware that Halo 2 showed its first gameplay preview at E3 2003, over a year before the game launched, and drew tremendous crowds. That footage has been archived. However, before the preview officially began, E3’s onsite attendees were presented a brief video preshow, with full professional production value, starring Sgt Johnson. That footage is briefly captured in Halo 2’s official making of documentary, and a few offscreen versions of it have found their way online, but to this day the raw video footage not been archived or re-released in its entirety. Well, Maniac remembers it, and he found a part of it in a very unlikely place. So sit back, and enjoy two frames of something next to nobody has seen in 20 years.

Halo 2 is out now for the Xbox and PC.

Lost Media – Until Dawn’s Preorder DLC April 3, 2023

Maniac finally does a Lost Media video on something gaming related! Today, he’s going to be talking about one of his favorite PS4 games, Until Dawn. That game is NOT lost, and people can absolutely play it and purchase it online. However, if they do, they’ll be playing with at least a few scenes missing from their copy of the game. That’s right, an entire subplot of Until Dawn is Lost Media!

Sony offered a digital incentive to people who preordered the game on the PlayStation Store, to include extra scenes from the game. As far as we know, they were the only organization to offer this incentive, as no retailers in the US had a preorder promotion for the game. As far as we can tell, since the game has launched Sony has not offered the scenes in any capacity, not even as Paid DLC. It seems like the scenes were originally meant to be a part of the game, as the early Lets Players who have played the scenes could not tell they weren’t originally meant to be part of the game.

So what does Maniac think of this? Well he’s doing a video literally titled “Lost Media” about it so that might give you a hint. Enjoy!

Until Dawn is out now for PlayStation 4.

Lost Media – Avengers: Damage Control VR January 25, 2023

You didn’t think we were going to feature just one piece of Lost Media this week did you? Today, we’ll be going back to gaming and talking about a VR game nobody will ever be able to play, Avengers: Damage Control. No, this is not the Avengers game that recently announced it would be ending support. Damage Control was actually based in the MCU and featured actors from the films. Here’s the official trailer for it.

Looks awesome doesn’t it? With VR headsets out there and plenty of systems capable of replicating this software, how did this game become lost media? Well, Damage Control wasn’t a game that you could just purchase, download and play at home. It was developed in conjunction with a company known as The VOID, which operated what I can only describe as a chain of Virtual Reality businesses across the US. To play Damage Control, you had to visit a specially designated VOID facility (but only one that announced they would be offering the game), and buy a ticket to play at a scheduled time. If you didn’t live anywhere near a VOID facility (there were only a few in the world) you would never be able to play Damage Control. In a time where literally any game can be obtained and played from home, this is about as ridiculous as it sounds.

When the world lockdown went into effect, facilities such as the VOID had to cease operations. Since you could only play their games at VOID locations, the VOID has no alternate methods of income. Shortly after operations paused, the company no longer had the ability to produce income to cover expenses and their facilities began to close worldwide, preventing people from playing many of their exclusive games, including Avengers: Damage Control.

We never got to play the original game before the facilities ceased operations. So here’s our take on the game, and our plea for it to be released on the Meta Quest platform.

There have been musings the VOID does plan to return but no word has been given as of the time of writing if they plan to resurrect their existing titles or where they will open their new facilities. If there is an update we will write about it.

Lost Media – Geeks in Love January 24, 2023

Welcome back to Lost Media where I talk about the Lost Media I’ve come across that nobody else remembers. In the glory days of Flash, a website called Ubergeek.tv produced some unique animations about Linux and Penguins. It shut down years ago, although some of that site’s content has been reuploaded to YouTube.

Sadly, the site’s final film, a ten-minute animation called “Geeks in Love” has not been preserved. It told the story of two young people who fell in love during computings earliest days, and the trials and tribulations of their life together. It was a beautiful short film which seemed like it was based on a true story told years later. I was lucky enough to watch the entire short when it first released, as shortly after its launch the creator put a premium fee to watch the film’s last five minutes. Since the site closed, it has been completely unavailable to rewatch.

Here’s what I remember about it, and my plea to anyone who may have a copy to archive it.