10 Lost Video Games That Were Discovered Years Later
Daredevil for PS2 would've been something special.
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00:00Lost Media is undeniably intriguing. After all, the big hits and misses alike are etched into
00:05video game history for all to look back on, but what about the games that almost didn't make it
00:10at all? I'm Si for WhatCulture.com, and here are 10 Lost Video Games That Were Discovered Years Later.
00:1610. Echo 2 – Sentinels of the Universe
00:19Sega developed a host of memorable franchises in the early 90s that included Sonic the Hedgehog,
00:24Alex Kidd, Streets of Rage, and perhaps the most overlooked of them all, Echo the Dolphin.
00:29Between 1992 and 1995, the franchise had three installments that all received rather consistent
00:34critical and commercial acclaim. When Sega braved new waters with the Dreamcast system,
00:39the majority of their established IPs never got a chance to shine on their 128-bit machine.
00:44However, Echo was one of the few that made it across with the 2000 reboot, Defender of the
00:49Future. Again, there were rave reviews, and as such, developers Appaloosa Interactive got to
00:54work on a follow-up. However, fans had no idea that this was even the case for years,
00:58as the sequel was cancelled before it was even announced thanks to the Dreamcast's
01:02unfortunate discontinuation. A prototype was discovered in 2007, but it took another nine
01:08years before a copy was released to the public. Echo 2 – Sentinels of the Universe looks
01:13impressive for a game at a suggested 30% completion, but it's hard to know how it
01:17would have turned out for sure considering how much is missing. However, Sentinels of the Universe is
01:22of particular note because, aside from the 2002 PS2 port of Defender of the Future,
01:26Sega's bottlenose friend has otherwise been lost at sea for 23 years and counting.
01:329. Lobo If you're a more casual fan of DC
01:35comic book characters, you might be at least aware of Lobo thanks to his appearance as a DLC fighter
01:40in Injustice Gods Among Us. However, if it wasn't for its ultimate cancellation, this wouldn't have
01:44been Lobo's first video game brawler. After Lobo's unexpected growth in popularity in the 90s,
01:50Ocean Software picked up the license and put a team to work on constructing a fighting game
01:54starring the violent alien and a series of his enemies. Lobo was undoubtedly inspired by Killer
01:59Instinct's pre-rendered graphics and the success of Mortal Kombat, as each character had a violent
02:04finishing move as described in a few gaming magazines at the time. However, despite the
02:08marketing starting up, the game never released. There was talk of prototype Lobo cartridges
02:13existing in collector's forums for years, but it took over a decade for ROMs of both the Mega Drive
02:17and Super Nintendo versions of the game to appear online in 2008 and 2009. The quality
02:23of these is surprisingly high, making its untimely cancellation sting for fans of the genre and the
02:28character. It remains the only official Lobo video game to this day, even in its unofficially
02:33released state. 8. Radical Dreamers
02:36Nintendo have taken part in quite a few odd hardware and software experiments over the years,
02:41but the Satellaview is truly out there. Essentially a cable modem attached to the SNES,
02:46this Japan-exclusive peripheral allowed gamers to tune in at certain times of the day for unique
02:51gaming experiences that would otherwise never be made available. One of these was Radical Dreamers,
02:56a 1996 visual novel adventure game that was a surprisingly weird choice for a sequel to one
03:01of the all-time JRPG greats, Chrono Trigger. Radical Dreamers stars Kid and Serge from the
03:06sequel Chrono Cross, as well as an amnesiac version of Magus from Chrono Trigger called
03:11Magi. Luka from Chrono Trigger also gets a mention as meeting her untimely fate in general,
03:16the story is a darker departure from the other entries in the series.
03:20Although more forgotten than technically lost, this timed experience local to Japan remained
03:24an oddity that most people didn't even know existed. Square avoided re-issuing the game
03:28for a long time due to its incongruous tone with the rest of the series and what they called
03:33questionable demand. Thankfully, ROM dumps in the 2000s allowed western fans a taste of Radical
03:38Dreamers before the company finally acquiesced and released it in 2022 as part of a re-release
03:43of Chrono Cross. 7. Resident Evil for the Gameboy Color
03:47Sigh, talking about Resident Evil on this channel, all of our subscribers saw this coming,
03:52does that include you? There aren't many consoles from 1996 onwards that don't have some kind of
03:57Resident Evil game on them. Whilst it hasn't been brought forward for quite some time,
04:01the original Resident Evil had three releases for the PlayStation, shambled its way onto the
04:05Sega Saturn and PC and eventually took a bite out of the Nintendo DS in 2006.
04:10This final note is particularly important because A. Deadly Silence is the best version of the game
04:15Fight Me and B. It marks a happy ending to a tumultuous story of trying to make Resident
04:20Evil an on-the-go experience. Capcom producer Yoshiki Okamoto was attracted to handheld gaming
04:25which had served Nintendo well through the 90s, hitting another boom nearing the turn of the
04:29millennium thanks to Pokemon and the Gameboy Color. Capcom hired UK team HotGen, led by
04:34Fergus McGovern, who had previously worked at Probe Entertainment and had experience importing
04:38arcade games to home consoles. In what is surely one of the most ambitious but doomed ports of
04:43all time, moving Resident Evil from PlayStation to Gameboy Color was a remarkable ask. Early
04:49screenshots looked promising in how faithful they were, but the release missed several deadlines
04:52and then hit the wall of cancellation. In 2012, different prototypes of the game were dropped
04:57online, which confirmed just how ambitious and how doomed the project was. It's clear that Resident
05:02Evil on Gameboy Color was never going to work, but it's marvellous that something so bold even
05:07existed at all.
05:096. Steven Seagal is the final option
05:12Michael Jackson had Moonwalker, Shaq had Shaq-Fu, and Steven Seagal nearly had the final option.
05:17In the mid-90s, TechMagic, rather than get a license to any of Steven Seagal's films,
05:21decided to craft a brand new side-scrolling beat-em-up adventure for the direct-to-video star.
05:26However, Seagal's involvement with the game was minimal, essentially boiling down to selling his
05:31likeness. The rotoscoped character the player takes control of is just a look-alike. Despite
05:35this, Steve Wick, who worked on the game and went on to develop for the Postal series,
05:39said in an interview with Nintendo Player that the company ran out of money, which led to the
05:43game's cancellation. TechMagic, meanwhile, announced that the final option was scrapped
05:47in favour of a different Seagal game for PlayStation and N64, which, unsurprisingly,
05:51also never came to be. Regardless, a prototype version of the final option got into the hands
05:56of an editor at Tips & Tricks magazine, making its way through several eBay auctions until it
06:00found a preservationist. The game, originally scheduled for a 1994 release, became publicly
06:05accessible in 2013, becoming another weird footnote in the career of a severely weird actor.
06:115. Garage Bad Dream Adventure
06:14Garage Bad Dream Adventure is a unique example on this list of a game that did get an official
06:18release but still wound up lost. Because the game's publisher, Toshiba EMI, decided to halt
06:23CD-ROM production in general, only 3,000 copies of Garage were originally made. This made it
06:28exceptionally rare and expensive, and owners of the game were hesitant to upload it to the
06:32internet for fear of Japanese piracy laws. Garage's strange psychological tone made it feel
06:37especially elusive compared to other lost games. The 1999 point-and-click horror is set inside the
06:42mind of a man named Yang, shown as a capitalist nightmare world populated by biomechanical
06:47beings. The game's art style feels inspired by the works of H.R. Giger and Junji Ito.
06:52Preservation of Garage came about via a committed group of fans who had discovered the game's
06:56existence and began hunting through online Japanese auctions. In 2014, a user called CC0
07:02secured a copy for ¥77,000, roughly $550, and put the game online. This prompted an English
07:09fan patch to be made years later, allowing those who had fallen in love with the twisted world to
07:13enjoy it properly. In 2021, thanks likely in part to the passion around its search those years ago,
07:19Garage got its first official release in 20 years for iOS and Android.
07:234. Aka-R
07:25There are a great many arcade classics lost to time and plenty of urban legends around them. Aka-R
07:30is one game that was unobtainable for a long time for both fans and the company who paid to create
07:35it. In early 1982, development on Atari's space shooter Aka-R wrapped, and a cabinet was sent to
07:41an arcade in Florida to see how it tested with consumers. Unfortunately, it was also sent
07:45alongside Robotron 2084, which smoked its contemporary, causing Aka-R to make next to
07:51no money. As such, the game was cancelled and full production was never pursued. Only three
07:56cabinets were ever made, and the private owners of the Aka-R cabs never uploaded the ROM to the
08:00internet, denying most of the public the chance to ever play it. However, in 2019, the game was
08:06dumped anonymously on an arcade forum. Allegedly, the ROM had been stolen by a tech who had visited
08:11the home of one of the private collectors. This is pretty grim, if true. However, now that the ROM
08:16had been released, those who had spent decades wondering about it could see it for themselves.
08:21Additionally, Atari, who had no backup of the game, also finally had access to it. As such,
08:26it appears as part of the celebratory collection Atari 50, finally at home amongst its peers.
08:323. Daredevil – The Man Without Fear Before Arkham Asylum revolutionised superhero
08:37video games single-handedly, we had Treyarch's PS2 Spider-Man titles, often still described as
08:42some of the best comic book video games ever. However, Spidey was not meant to swing through
08:46the gaming sphere alone. In the early 2000s, developers 5000ft's pitch for a Daredevil game
08:52was approved by Marvel and they began in earnest on their first open-world adventure. The titular
08:57hero was able to complete side missions on the way to his main objective, using a shadow world
09:01to take advantage of Daredevil's senses to find enemies and heat sources. Apparently, the
09:06development of Daredevil was pretty rough, in particular as it morphed over time with the
09:10announcement of the Ben Affleck-led film entering production. This meant producers Encore, Marvel
09:15and Sony Pictures all required approvals on everything the studio did. There was an engine
09:20switch, the open world was scrapped in favour of being a linear brawler, costs ballooned and there
09:24were even alleged drug abuse allegations at the studio. In 2020, video game preservationist P2P
09:30Online uploaded a video of the 2003 build of Daredevil which reignited interest. Then,
09:35three years later, a 2004 build was discovered. Fans worked together to make this version,
09:40best described as somewhat finished, playable, unearthing a gem from nearly 20 years ago that
09:45most people forgot ever existed. 2. Drac's Night Out
09:50Drac's Night Out is a good-humoured little adventure game for the NES where the player
09:53assists Dracula in leaving his tower and navigating the town below. Drac must avoid
09:58or trap villagers and suck their blood whilst searching for his bride Mina. It's simple,
10:02charming fun that never actually released. The game was expected to drop in 1991 but,
10:07despite being almost ready, it never made it to store shelves. This is particularly odd as it was
10:12also tied up in a licensing agreement. Midway through development, the producer Parker Brothers
10:17had struck a deal with Reebok. As such, the game became a tie-in for Reebok Pumps, which Drac can
10:22pick up on his travels for extra speed and, of course, early 90s style. What's remarkable about
10:27this story is how the game was preserved. It just so happened that Parker Brothers developer Rex
10:32Bradford lived on the same street as NES fan Gideon G, who would borrow the near-final version
10:37of the game's cartridge as a kid and would wind up keeping it. As he grew up and got into video
10:42game emulation and preservation, Gideon realised he had something special in his collection and
10:46made sure the game got online nearly a decade after it was supposed to be released.
10:511. Akira for the Sega Mega Drive
10:54Considering the worldwide cultural impact of it, it's surprising that there haven't been
10:57more attempts at turning 1988 motion picture Akira into video games. The Japanese Famicom
11:02title was poorly received but there was an attempt made by THQ in the early 90s to bring
11:07Neo-Tokyo to a variety of platforms. Mega Drive, Sega CD, Game Gear, SNES and Game Boy. These were
11:13shown to gamers in magazines and briefly at the 1994 Summer Consumer Electronics Show before
11:18vanishing without a trace. Behind the scenes, each version of the game was being cut one by one,
11:24with the Mega Drive version making it the furthest before also being axed.
11:28And so the game became lost media for two decades until Boxing Day of 2019,
11:32appropriately the year the film is set, when a prototype of the Mega Drive version was uploaded
11:37to the internet. Gamers would finally get a good look at Akira, even if it was only
11:41semi-complete, to find that its contents are as wide a net as the original choice of systems.
11:46Each level bounces from one genre to the next, driving, first person doom-like exploration,
11:51side-scrolling adventure, isometric combat and so on. It's an appropriately audacious direction
11:56for audacious source material featuring some stunning cutscenes for the time,
12:00and in retrospect could have been a late-era Mega Drive classic if it had made it over the finish
12:05line. Thank goodness we can play these video games again, because sometimes that's not always
12:09the case. Speaking of which, there's a video on screen now for 10 video game moments that
12:13you'll never see again. Thanks for watching, I've been Si for WhatCulture, and have a good week.