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.