One of my current hobbies is doing research on Lost Media.
For those who don't know, Lost Media refers to things that were available in the past, but can't be found anymore. It can be a lost Youtube video, a TV show, music, and of course, Video-Games.
I'm searching now for some lost games to share with you guys, and I found some curious stuff. So, get ready for some search.
WALUIGI'S TOENAIL CLIPPING PARTY
Back in 2000, Nintendo released a flash game for PC named "Waluigi's Toenail Clipping Party", also known as "Waluigi's Foot Fault".
The premise was quite simple: The player should clip Waluigi's disgusting toenails, and catch them with a jar. to obtain points. It was a game used to promote Mario Tennis, coming to Nintendo 64.
The Nintendo Power Online magazine from September 2000 notes that the game was avaialable at an webste called Waluigi.com.
Unfortunately, there's no trace of this game other than some promotional images. No backup was found up to this day, and the SWF can't be found at the Internet Archive, so far, it's a Lost Media.
FINAL FANTASY IV (Famicom)
Final Fantasy IV is a very popular SNES game, and considered by many the first Final Fantasy to focus on character development and story. However, in 1990, several magazines were talking about the 4th installment in the series coming for the NES, or Famicom in japanese.
In November, 1990, the popular Famitsu magazine made an special article about the upcoming Final Fantasy IV for the NES. But without any screenshots. It was believed that the game would be an improvement over the three previous titles, however we don't know anything about the characters or the plot.
At that time it was also believed that Final Fantasy V were going to be the first game for the SNES. About three months later, Famitsu told in a new magazine that the NES title was cancelled, and moved to the SNES.
About FFIV for Famicom, it's still unknown what the game would look like. Some people believe that most of the ideas were moved up to the SNES version we all know, or if there's any playable build, but no people from Square ever touched that subject.
MARIO MOTORS
Back in February 2018, at Reboot Develop Conference, Yoot Saito revealed a cancelled game for Nintendo DS called Mario Motors.
The concept of the game was that the players could use pieces of metal to build parts of their vehicles. There was also the idea of blowing the mic to add more speed, but that was scrapped due to the fear of kids losing their breath.
Even if this is a Mario Kart title, we have no information how much of this game was about racing at all. Sadly, we only have screenshots, one of them above, showing Mario and an unknown other character.
We also don't know what is the status of this game, or why it was never released, since Miyamoto and Iwata found the concept very interesting.
The prototype of DEAD SPACE
Yes, Dead Space is a popular and fully released game for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC. But did you knew that at some point we had it running on the original Xbox?
In early 2006, Dead Space was being made for the Xbox as a pitch, which was made in only 3 months. And it was a success, so it was moved for the next-generation, so it could be better.
The game's art director Ian Milham revealed a footage of the prototype, and you can watch it below:
It's unknown if this prototype still exists, since no word of it came from the developers. But if you ask me, they could very well had discarded this prototype, so maybe it will be a Lost Media forever.
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 4 EPISODE III
Sonic the Hedgehog 4 was an episodic game series back around the 2010s. Episodes I and II were released for multiple platforms.
After Episode II, the third episode began development at Sega Studios Australia. However, after some unfortunate events, this studio became defunct, and the third chapter of this series never saw the light of the day.
Rumors says that there was a huge possibility of this episode featuring Knuckles the Echidna, but it's not confirmed. It's also unknown how far the studio went into creating the title, but since we don't even have screenshots for it, and no more words on Sonic 4 were told, we may never know.
If there is some kind of playable build, it's most likely lost.
HEART OF DARKNESS for Game Boy Advanced
Heart of Darkness is a very popular cinematic game released for Playstation 1 and PC. However, we actually had a Game Boy Advanced port of the title in development, and it was annoucned back in 2001.
Infogrames would release it in Europe first, according to the news, but for unknown reasons, it was cancelled.
We have a lot of examples where classic games builds get leaked to the public, like Starfox 2 for SNES, or other beta games. But in this case, no such a version exists. However, we have some fan recreations of how the game would look on GBA.
FIRE EMBLEM WII
Fire Emblem Wii is a tech demo made in the late 2000s showing one of Nintendo's most popular franchises running on the Wii. It was a real-time strategy game, rather than turn-based gameplay, similar to Pikmin.
Here is a screenshot of the build:
If you are a Fire Emblem fan and hopes to some day play this build, well, I have some sad news for you: It's unknown if this prototype ever survived.
That's because this game had no actual ideas or plans, it was made only to "test" how the series would work on Wii, so rumor is that it was permanently discarded, and it's unknown if anyone on this world has access to it.
Well, I think this is it for now. This took me over 1 hour and 15 minutes to search and write, so give me a thumbs up if you like it.
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