Alas, the few people who do have access to the prototype don’t share our point of view; thus, there is no ROM dump available anywhere (or at least I couldn’t find one). That’s what I was trying to imply with my previous post. If you have better luck, please let me know.
Back on topic: another famous cancelled game is Sonic X-treme, but what some of you may not know is that fans found the source code for one of the game’s early builds and got it to run on modern Windows. It’s a very early build (comparable to the prototype of Super Mario’s Wacky Worlds for CDI): there don’t seem to be any enemies, you can’t collect rings, and you have to do multiple mid-air jumps to get around some of the levels, but it’s playable. Thread is here for those curious.
As for lost media, there’s Dragon Hopper for the Virtual Boy. Unlike Bound High or even Katakis 3D, there’s no known prototype anywhere, with the only evidence of its existence being E3 footage and other promotional material (and even that much is a rare find). From what I’ve read, it looks like it could’ve been a pretty fun game; oh well.
Well, I don’t like to come this off as rude but I generally classify lost media as something that is released at one point to a group of people at least but is since then never recovered. For games generally it’s ones that are released to the public in some playable capacity but cannot be found anywhere. For strictly visual mediums like movies it’s those that are released onto cinemas and/or television and nobody has come forth with a copy for public viewing.
Something that is released to the public meant for wide consumption but later becomes lost to time. I know this can also mean rare games, but those can be found easier for the most part. The ones that do get lost are often those that are obscure or have limited runs.
I was going to write a post about how cancellation is pretty much the only way a video game could be lost since a public release would inevitably lead to the ROM being dumped, but then I remembered this:
It had a public, retail release, but even the only known console can’t be played because of a malfunctioning up button. If this doesn’t count as a lost video game, I don’t know what does. Maybe you could name a specific game that counts?
Admittedly it does get tricky for video games more than movies and TV shows. PT comes to mind sort of as Konami has done all they can to forget its existence, even patching the game just to remove it.
Yeah, I guess. That’s a bit far fetched, but I mentioned because now there is not really a straight download per se for PT, and the ways that are available seem super complex.
Don’t you think we should stop this whole conversation? It is honestly draining.
Edit: I mean the definition of lost media. I guess it’s more hard to define in gaming since many rare games can still be played via emulation on PCs and Raspberry Pis
Back on topic: Mega Man Universe was a game I knew about before it was cancelled, and I was really looking forward to it, but then I stopped hearing anything about it and even forgot about it until recently. Plus, just like with Dragon Hopper, there doesn’t seem to be any known backup or prototype of the game anywhere despite game-play having been shown off. Oh well, at least we got Mega Man Unlimited.
Honestly going out of topic even more I’m kind of interested in level editors. It’s especially great when official devs release tools for their IPs like Nintendo for Mario. Although I remember a ton of Ben 10 level makers from Cartoon Network and I think some others from Nickelodeon and maybe Disney Channel.
HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THAT THIS USER IS THE ONLY OTHER ONE ACTIVE IN THE THREAD??? !!!111 ONE
Er, ahem…
If you’re gonna go off topic that way, you may want to consider making a new thread specifically about level editors. However, I do know of a few:
SMBX is pretty versatile, even if you don’t use the fan-injected Luna/Lua add-on. I was part of that community for a few years and even managed to release a few levels myself (though I tended to rely on stage gimmicks since my regular levels weren’t as well received).
There’s also Zelda Classic and Mega Man Maker, but I haven’t tried those out since I’m focusing on my Steam backlog right now. I might check them out in the future (or even go back to SMBX) since I’ve played quite a few professional games that have trouble with level design.
EDIT: Oh, and Tower of Heaven had a level editor as well. Unfortunately, even though you could make really large levels, it didn’t support mid-level checkpoints. I also used Super Mario Flash before I found out about SMBX, but this one is significantly less versatile: only horizontal levels were supported (and only up to a length of 4180 pixels), only two sections were available (as opposed to SMBX’s 21), there were FAR fewer enemies (and you couldn’t modify their stats like in SMBX), and worst of all, neither Mario nor Luigi (the only two available characters compared to SMBX’s five) could do short hops; a single tap of the up button sends you as high as you can go. The only difference that isn’t objectively worse is that if you hit lava only with your top-half as Super Mario/Super Luigi, you don’t die; you just lose your mushroom.
As for a cancelled level editor, there’s Mega Man Universe…
Oh, and Mega Man VR was also advertised as having a level editor planned, but that title never saw release, either. That was another one I was looking forward to; I still have Team Perihelion’s Tumblr page bookmarked from when I was on my fan-made Mega Man kick after beating Mega Man Unlimited.
