LOST Video Games Found

Every now and then a little gaming miracle happens; lost video games are found and preserved for all to enjoy. Today we take a look at several cases of lost games, why they were cancelled, and how they were found, including Star Fox 2 for the SNES, Atari's Akka Arrh, Conquest, as well as Drac's Night Out for Nintendo's NES.

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Special Thanks: Ethan Johnson, Chris Kohler, Frank Cifaldi, Mark Lesser, Rex Bradford, Gideon Zhi, and Jeremy Smith.

Research/Writing by Dylan Mansfield
Video Editing by TheCartoonGamer
Voice Over by Rezrospect @Rezrospect

Sources/Further Reading:
Gasking, Frank. The Games That Weren’t. Bitmap Books (U.K.), 2019. pp. 76-84, 388-391.
"PreNews: CES Arrest". GamePro. No. 69. April 1995. p. 146.
Drury, Paul. "In The Chair With… Mike Hally" Retro Gamer, Dec. 2015, pp. 92-97.
Salwitz, John. Classic Game Postmortem: Paperboy, Mar. 2019 at Moscone Center, GDC, 1 May 2019.
Drury, Paul. "Desert Island Disks: Larry DeMar." Retro Gamer, Aug. 2010, pp. 86-91.
Hague, James. "Eugene Jarvis." Halcyon Days: Interviews with Classic Computer and Video Games Programmers. Dadgum Games, Mar. 1997.
Lesser, Mark. Personal Interview. 22 Nov. 2022.
Bradford, Rex. Personal Interview. 2 Dec. 2022.
Zhi, Gideon. Personal Interview. 2 Dec. 2022.

#starfox #starfox2 #cancelled #lostmedia #nintendo

[FalcoArwing]

Pretty surreal seeing you guys using my 13 year old footage of SF2. I was still a teenager and got really exited discovering that stage and seeing no info about it online at the time. I almost never miss a video and been a fan of your channel for almost 10 years. Keep up the good work!

[smeltstarverse]

Oddly enough, Akka Arrh's gameplay seems to be in fitting with some of the ways Polybius's gameplay has been described in accounts, and the game's extremely limited early testing might have made an imprint on the very few kids who spent their quarters on it... probably coincidence, though.

[ChaosP]

The fact that Dylan Cuthbert was pleased to find out Star Fox 2 finally got released tickles me. The game's fun, at least in my opinion, but it can be a little stressful.

[rockmanx]

While I understand the series of events under which Akka Arrh eventually made it's way to the public, at the same time it would've been an absolute travesty to have lost this game to time. It really is a very good and challenging game, so I'm glad the story has a happy ending there, and Minter's reimagining is absolutely stellar.

[KeebeThePlush]

The rayman team was incredibly talented for putting the rayman 2 prototype in the official rayman 2 game

[apollorockr]

The funny thing is that the first time I ever heard of Drac’s Night Out was from the AVGN’s Halloween review of the Dracula games. XD He even was wearing the Reebok Pumps in that episode. XD

[EpicJasonX]

the coolest thing about the final build of Star Fox 2 is that you can play it on an actual SNES hardware as a repro cart. keeping this amazing game console alive far longer past it's expiration date.

[buivars]

incredibly based to disguise yourself as a repairman just to rip the ROM of a game a "collector" refuses to release

[Garinovitch]

You know, it might be a controversial move, but until Atari had their official release of Akka Arrh, I can appreciate the efforts of the man that snuck in and copied the files behind the owner's back. He just wanted to give others the chance to play this game, seems like the owner only cared for the fame behind out otherwise he would have done it himself ages ago. There's also a chance this guy who went through all this trouble also motivated Atari's decision to officially release it.

[cybertruckeralpha]

13:36 "Despite its controversial ROM release..."
lol That release was a direct cause of the happy ending it got.

[whisper]

I’m always fascinated by how lost games suddenly pop up years later.

[squashmvg]

Gotta pay a bit of respect to the thief, Ming. They tricked the genius collector man with the oldest trick in the book. The Fake Repairman lol

[pufflepoint]

Akka Ahhr makes me wonder... could it be what inspired Polybius? The gameplay looks like every Polybius remake I've ever seen. The tempest like gameplay, plus the unique (and I imagine migraine inducing) zoom mechanic, plus the rapidly changing colors...

Hell, being a market test makes sense as to the whole "vanished as soon as it appeared" part if the story. The only thing missing is the popularity angle.

I'm guessing that Akka Ahhr started rumors in the arcade community that, over time, morphed and contorted wildly before becoming the bassis for the Polybius story, which would then go on to achieve even higher levels of fame.

[maccamachine]

I’ve been into lost media for years now but it’s still always interesting some of my favorite stuff to get into

[embermoto]

Could Akka Arrh be the origins of the Polybius urban legend? The dates only a year off, the game play sounds like it could match, the flashing lights could cause a lot of the symptoms playing Polybius was said to cause. The men in black could be people coming to check on how popular the game was. The supposed long lines for the game could be people misremember and attributing lines for Robotron to Akka Arrh. I could be way off here it just seems like a lot fits.

[CharlyHyo]

wait, so AVGN has a rare version or a reproduction cartridge of Drac's!?
Wow what one learns these days

[RicardoFiorani]

12:35 This is not the worst way. Remember that the whole reason that some rare arcades don't get their rom online is just so collectors can make more money out of their cabinets due to "rarity". So I would say it's the only way to bypass greedy.

[forgottenalex]

Hearing about collectors that would rarther have exclusivity then preservation always pisses me off

[The_Mister_E]

Data hoarders who hold one of a kind software hostage until the mediums rot are the scum of the earth and should be chastised at every opportunity.

Games are meant to be enjoyed, not hidden away by greedy trolls.

[vidjenko]

Marble Madness 2 being dumped online out of nowhere is also an honorable mention. Due to the unknown source of the dump it seems that it was stolen from a private collector as well