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:
Machkovech, Sam. “Original Star Fox staffer tells story of sequel’s shelving, surprise launch.” ArsTechnica, 3 Oct. 2017, arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/1....
McFarren, Damien. “Feature: The Full Story Behind Star Fox 2, Nintendo's Most Famous Cancellation.” Nintendo Life, 21 May 2015, www.nintendolife.com/news/201....
Gasking, Frank. The Games That Weren’t. Bitmap Books (U.K.), 2019. pp. 76-84, 388-391.
Wright, Steven T. “Star Fox 2: By the numbers.” Polygon, 24 Oct. 2017, www.polygon.com/features/2017....
"PreNews: CES Arrest". GamePro. No. 69. April 1995. p. 146.
Gowan, Evan. “Star Fox 2.” SNESCentral, 22 Sept. 2017, snescentral.com/article.php?id....
Sao, Akinori. “Interview: Star Fox & Star Fox 2.” Nintendo, Sept. 2017, web.archive.org/web/201803170....
Dring, Christopher. “Dylan Cuthbert: “Star Fox 2 release is a big awesome surprise.” Games Industry.biz, 27 Jun. 2017, www.gamesindustry.biz/dylan-c....
Drury, Paul. "In The Chair With… Mike Hally" Retro Gamer, Dec. 2015, pp. 92-97.
“TDE EP05 - Mike Hally of Atari on Lucasfilm, Star Wars, lost classic Akka Arrh and Gravitar.” The Ted Dabney Experience, 23 Jun. 2020, www.teddabneyexperience.com/e...
Salwitz, John. Classic Game Postmortem: Paperboy, Mar. 2019 at Moscone Center, GDC, 1 May 2019.
Evans, Scott. “Akka Arrh.” SafeStuff, 11 Apr. 2003, web.archive.org/web/200402241....
Orland, Kyle. “Did a vigilante ROM leaker go too far to “preserve” a lost Atari ROM?” ArsTechnica, 26 Apr. 2019, arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/0....
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.
Kohler, Chris. “This Game Industry Pioneer Never Gave Up on the Video Arcade” Wired, 18 Dec. 2013, www.wired.com/2013/12/eugene-....
Vavasour, Jeff. “Jeff Vavasour's VIDEO AND COMPUTER GAME Page.” Jeff Vavasour, 20 Jun. 2009, www.vavasour.ca/jeff/games.html.
Stilphen, Scott. “DP Interviews Mark Lesser.” Digital Press, 2007, www.digitpress.com/library/in....
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

[@buivars]

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

[@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!

[@Chaos89P]

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.

[@smeltstarverse7306]

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.

[@KeebeThePlush]

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

[@apollorock3r244]

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

[@rockmanx2002]

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.

[@EpicJasonX9000]

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.

[@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

[@vidjenko8349]

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

[@CharlyHyo]

wait, so AVGN has a rare version or a reproduction cartridge of Drac's!?

[@whisper4379]

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

[@danielturner1891]

Like these games, I too was lost seemingly forever. But then my mom remembered she left me at the store and returned.

[@CountD42]

I hope some day we'll get to see what happened to Star Fox 3 through Star Fox 63.

[@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...

[@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

[@forgottenalex]

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

[@RicardoFiorani]

12:35

[@ThisisTechie]

Little disappointed that Marble Madness 2 wasn't mentioned even though one of the background tracks in the video was a track from the original Marble Madness.