UPDATE: Lost Media and Beta Content, a Brave New World of Mysteries

The Debt’s Come Due

No, not financial debt, but in the choice currency for internet sleuths: information. And crypto, but we won’t factor that in. I promised I’d make a massive update to my very first posts on this blog, so with little hesitation, let’s see how much progress has been made with the entries from those posts, as well as several new entries… though, then again, that’s in part because most of the lost media covered was found at the time of the first posts. HIT THE INTRO, JOHNNY!

Lost Media: Creepypasta Images

Jesus Christ, I can’t believe we’re starting with this, but with The Day the Clown Cried and Me and My Friends covered in a more recent post here, we’re spread a little thin when it comes to fictional material to cover. Hey, it’s either we talk about this or that violent homoerotic SpongeBob storyboard jam. At the time of my first post here, I covered a few notorious creepypasta-related pictures with ambiguous origins, and sure, we may never get to see a needlessly panned Jerry Lewis masterpiece, but at least we know where the Backrooms originated! The only image with a clear source at the time of the first post was the one associated with a demented Facebook account and a story about a public access kid’s show starring an evil clown duo, which turned out to be a simple edit of an antique Japanese doll, but today, two other notable codes have been cracked. The “Mario victim” image is a modified photo of a girl cosplaying as the vocalist of Japanese metal band Dir En Grey, and while it was not included in my original post, we at long last know how the infamous Smile Dog picture was stitched together… kind of. In the past few months, the deep red Frankenstein’s Monster of a screamer image was found to have been a goofy family photo of a husky with filters and a toothy grin applied, but frankly, that photo never hit me the same way as the eerie and desaturated smile.jpg polaroid. That one, as far as I’m aware, is still a total mystery, which keeps the mystique of well-incorporated details like the harsh grain and that bloody hand on the left intact.

As for Jeff the Killer, no one knows yet, and why should they care? Someone needs to get off their ass and solve the Squidward Community College conundrum. NOW. DO IT. Redefine the meaning of an armchair investigator, you lazy fuck.

Lost Media: Real-Life Incidents

It’s taken me time to realize that delving into cannibal footage on the first post was oddly and morbidly specific, so let’s get a touch more general and discuss crimes and tragedies with missing recordings. Now, considering 9/11 lost media is its own separate rabbit hole, it’s only logical to make up for lost time, as it goes well beyond just capturing the disaster. To preface, I didn’t even know what 9/11 was until a girl I knew in elementary school told me her dad was in New York when it happened (keep in mind, I was barely two years old when it did), but it was within my lifetime nonetheless, and I’m in full support of preserving its history with various footage so long as searchers don’t get too hooked on the blood and guts of it. Echoing through the noise of investigations into things like the music that played in the plaza on September 11 and even banned shock videos of the jumpers, an hour-long tape recorded on a Canon camcorder was recently digitized with collaboration between prominent searcher Between Two Towers and Edward Sferrazza, a contractor who filmed the events from 8:46 AM to 10:20 AM. Of course, 9/11 material covered by Between Two Towers and Blameitonjorge has always lay in this questionable moral position from my perspective, as Sferrazza was rather vocal after the tape’s release about how no one who wasn’t there in person would know how it felt, and Jorge even raised judgmental questions towards the relatives of 9/11 victims for not providing enough details about a photographer on scene during the first strike… never considering the notion that they might want to remain anonymous out of survivor’s guilt.

For now, let’s sidestep the subject of the Station club fire, as it’s become a repetitive trend to talk about in spite of how tragic it was. Moreover, you have the Mexia supermarket, which was a grocery store based in Fort Worth that was abandoned without any preparation, refridgeration, or god forbid, redistribution of its products. The level of rot that transpired infested the market with insects and rodents, and a hazmat team had to come in to clear out the developing biohazard. It was during this that footage was captured for the History Channel series Life After People. Although it retains far more of an obscure mystique than the Station fire, what makes it bizarre is just the sheer amount of effort that’s gone into unearthing as much visual material of this incident as humanly possible. I mean… it was the size of, like, three to five Trader Joes, and it was nothing but meats, eggs, and produce molding over and crawling with maggots. Should we really be so persistent on finding so many visuals of that?

I suppose, if missing person reports refer to real-world disappearances, you could argue they count as falling under the same category. A stretch, I know, but this is an interesting topic. In the same video where Blameitonjorge introduced his flock to Lucky 7, an incredibly obscure ’70s pirate TV channel that was broadcast briefly in the Syracuse area—it was hosted by a man in a gas mask, featured a catchy theme song and animated logo bumper, and aired famous pornos like Deep Throat—one such report managed to give the also-oversaturated Max Headroom Incident a run for its money in the sense of, “what the fresh hell is happening on my TV?!” See, when WMAQ-TV Channel 5 in Chicago was signing off one night in 1989, the national anthem rang out… followed by the most lackluster missing person report in history. The image was high-contrast enough to make the person in question, Joanna Lopez, look like an alien with no other leads to go off beyond a disconnected phone number for the Chicago police youth division. This stayed onscreen all through the night until the channel resumed the next morning. That’s it. That was all Joanna wrote. A couple repeated instances of this have also been shared online, one of which only lasted for a few seconds, but the best leads we have to go off are (a) a possible Jane Doe and prostitute who was found dead at the hands of a john and (b) a matching contact who spoke on the phone with searchers for some time before going radio silent for unknown reasons.

Lost Media: Misc. Media

I’d consider it pretty apt to transition into beta content by discussing video game lost media last, so before we get to that, we have two incomprehensible examples that I’m honestly shocked weren’t covered in the first post. First on the docket is a little something called Uncle Walt, which was an experimental animated short by a film student in the 1960s named Robert Swarthe. His goal? That would be to host a loving tribute to Walt Disney by having Mickey and Minnie Mouse perform in a stereotypical African minstrel show; bare-breasted centaurs from Fantasia work in a red light district with Goofy as their pimp; a Mickey Mouse cult carry out a Bohemian Grove-style ritual in front of a dead Mickey in his mausoleum; and young children watch the transformation of the evil queen from Snow White in horror. Yeah, it’s not exactly a surprise that this thing ended up lost, but a few months ago, Blameitonjorge discussed how the film was being released on an unliscensed Mickey Mouse cartoon DVD compilation called Public Domain Mouse Adventures… only to be omitted from the set due to, as the head of the production company Thunderbean vaguely explained, “several factors related to the film”. Although Jorge didn’t seem to understand that the short contained Disney properties that are not yet public domain, or that Swarthe himself may not have wanted it released out of embarrassment, he referred to this as a disheartening end for Uncle Walt… and then, a digitized 16mm print of the short was dumped online a month or two ago.

I mean… he was right about this shit being unpredictable. Where’s the Smash Bros. Shitfest ’99 livestream at, Jorgie? You said you were confident we’d get to see that!

Ahem. I digress. Let’s talk about Hitogata! What’s that? What the hell is a Hitogata, you ask? Well, it essentially means “doll” in Japanese, but that has very little bearing on this subject matter. At some point in the early and mid-2000s, students in Japan were exposed either on TV or at school assemblies to a PSA that seemed crafted with the sole purpose of traumatizing them. According to users on 2channel, or Japanese 4chan, it featured two pale humanoid silhouettes in front of a colorless backdrop—they seem to remember it being a railroad—and blinking in and out, one after the other. As this happened, a voiceover and onscreen text said something among the lines of, “Somewhere on Earth, a person dies every two seconds.” Other than the harsh sounds the figures made when blinking, very little else happened, and there didn’t seem to be any real educational value beyond, “bad things happen, man.” For good reason, this has become a popular urban legend on the Japanese internet, and the Lost Media Wiki even launched an “On the Hunt” campaign for it. The search involved contacting public service organizations and broadcasting networks like AC Japan, but they’ve denied any involvement. Honestly, if Slamfest ’99 has a minimal chance of getting out there, I have a strong feeling this PSA is either the result of the Mandela Effect or just an elaborate hoax. Either way, it’d be interesting to see it for real as opposed to the dozens of reenactments, but then again? The mystery is part of what makes it unique.

Of course, I just brought up 4chan, so here’s where I embed my obligatory “4chan users in a nutshell” clip from Pink Floyd – The Wall.

Lost Media: Video Games

Okay, little Jimmy, wrap up your Fortnite match! It’s time to explore some weird shit! To start with, I made a wee little error in my childhood games post here when discussing Rugrats: Royal Ransom, as the prerelease trailer found in the files for Rocket Power: Beach Bandits was something you could watch from the game’s “movies” menu. Presumably, not enough people knew or cared enough to clarify that, even though at least one upload exists for the Rugrats game’s hidden game over cutscene. Well, in a more curious case, a short CGI film was produced upon the release of Rayman 2: The Great Escape, titled Rayman’s Training. Only split-second clips existed until a prototype build for Beyond Good and Evil, a game developed by Rayman creator Michel Ancel, was found to have contained the full-length animation minus any audio. Blameitonjorge referred to the animation as being “of very low quality,” which is either in regards to the video quality or proof that his standards for animation are in desperate need of rebalancing.

Off that subject, though, I feel like Minecraft has been starved of the spotlight here for a little too long. See, I’ve heard of the super early pre-alpha builds where it was basically just a bunch of Steves hobbling around a comparatively vacant world, but perhaps, at the time I was checking the Minecraft Wiki for the player models’ skin templates—I was working Steve and Alex into Smash Bros. Brawl and Sonic World—I wasn’t fully prepared to uncover the game’s deeper origins. As it were, Minecraft technically began as a lost game called Zombie Town, which was developed by Minecraft creator Notch among a myriad of other Java development projects from 2005 to 2009. The properties he worked with included Sonic, Mega Man, and even a zombie survival sim inspired by Left 4 Dead; ultimately, Zombie Town was an improved sequel to this third project, and upon realizing how well its blocky assets fit into a low-key sandbox setting, he worked the player models and zombie characters into his eventual masterpiece.

Beta Content: Rockstar Games

Rolling into beta content, I would likely lose my fan credentials for never discussing the staggering amount of changes made throughout the development of all three Red Dead games… but I have zero passion for Red Dead Revolver, so let’s cover the presumed remake that fixed practically everything wrong with or hollow about it. The first Redemption was revealed in a tech demo as early as 2005, which featured a very primitive and generic old west town resembling Armadillo and a faceless outlaw decades older than John Marston. John himself would look notably different in later promotional material, but trust me, there’s plenty more dubious content afoot. Take two cut missions supported by limited evidence in the form of audio, the first being focused on John delivering relics to Mother Superior. Funny enough, she’s voiced by someone entirely different, and not only does she sound far less cold and raspy than her final voice (I swore for some time that her final voice was lent by Eartha Kitt, but she died in 2008), but she’s somewhat comparable to how she’s depicted in Red Dead Redemption II. Note that a couple of the files embedded below are missing from the PC port, so I extracted them from my Xbox 360 ISO.

The second mission is… well… it’s Of Mice and Men. It’s just Of Mine of Men. So blatantly, in fact, that it’s no wonder why it was cut. John runs into an ornery little person and decides to find him a friend, after which a drunkard points him to the lair of a proclaimed giant. The giant and the little guy try to break it off, but the former accidentially kills a woman in the process of hugging her. John has a choice of putting the poor bastard down, but if he chooses not to, the little guy does the shooting himself. Yeah, it’s, uh… it’s pretty blatant. Some extra trivia is that this mission was reimagined from the ground up in the second Redemption and titled “The Smell of Grease Paint”. The giant, now named Bertram, is inspired by sideshow star Schlitzie while the little person is Magnifico the tiny magician. Also, it bears zero resemblance to Of Mice and Men, and it’s actually rather lighthearted and short.

Oh, and here’s a bonus clip in the form of a placeholder recording for the start of the Pete Turner mission, as I’m pretty sure it hasn’t been documented anywhere.

While minor, there is one note I’d like to give regarding Undead Nightmare, as it doesn’t have too much in the way of beta content. There is that early version of Undead Marston, but it’s basically just default Marston retextured, so I will say that visiting Beecher’s Hope during the DLC didn’t always involve just Ayauhtéotl telling John to buzz off. Rather, when stitched together, an unfinished cutscene would’ve acted as a “false ending” based on the file names, in which John actually gives Jack and Abigail seconds of the steaks he fed them at the start. While janky due to its unfinished nature, the cutscene was mostly restored in this video here.

Of course, it’d be a war crime not to shift attention over to the second game. You have Arthur looking like a rougher and meaner Roger Clark, Guarma as a fully explorable island called Guama, the remastered but unfinished expanse of Nuevo Paraíso, the car-sized legendary channel catfish that devours Jeremy Gill, the ability to put a knife to a kid’s throat and sock him in the chest cavity… uh, you know what? We’ll tiptoe around that one. Lesser-known material cut from this game includes an avalanche from an extended prologue alongside Tempest Rim, an inaccessible plateau in the Grizzlies with animals and vegetation; mountains outside the boundaries that reach at least double the height of Mount Hagen, the highest point in the game; green sea turtles and tiger sharks that can’t be interacted with despite appearing beyond the limits of Guarma, alongside unseen rock arches and a textureless cube the size of a skyscraper; 1899 and 1907 variations of a giant, who was meant to physically appear during his random encounter; an obese woman intended to appear at Butcher Creek who may have been the incestuous mother of the Murfree Brood, a dynamic likely based on that infamous X-Files episode; a hidden shoreline where Arthur’s coded to cough like a machine gun for no apparent reason; horrific noises made by the removed Loch Ness Monster that was later repurposed for Cayo Perico in GTA Online; and, oh, my sweet, merciful god, why didn’t I talk about this sooner?! Please, next section, save me from the stranglehold of regret!

As for GTA V, NO. SHUT UP. Don’t even say it. There will be no talk about its planned singleplayer DLCs because the sheer excess of YouTube comments complaining about their cancellation gives me a headache. Instead, let’s explore GTA IV, as it was admittedly neglected at the time of my initial post. In the case of this game, which I respect minus all the gay slurs used, the most immense scrapped idea was by far a whole fictitious state for the game’s map, meaning GTA VI would not have been the first to go there. It was because they began development on RAGE, their personal game engine that allowed for groundbreaking physics and visual quality, that they shrunk the map down and focused on gameplay instead. This is almost paradoxical, though, as a shot of the ferry terminal from the first trailer showcased ferries that never made it in, alongside seagulls. These seagulls appear in-game, but only at this one location and popping in out of thin air at the specific time of day from the trailer. Add to this removed barbershops, clothing options like fingerless gloves from character illustrations of Niko, weapons like the silenced pistol, a zombie survival minigame like the one from Saints Row 2, and most of all, flyable planes that never showed up because the map was too small, and it makes the game feel just a kiss or two less impressive. As saying this could in no way result in comments calling me a soulless worm who deserves to kill himself, Saints Row 2 is by comparison a highly customizable experience from the same year that almost never gets boring, boasting a map close to the same size but a thousand times more diverse and explorable (one could argue more interactive, too, but that’s debatable as both games are so different.) GTA IV does seem to be one of the last games to feature test maps to experiment with the capabilities of its engine, though, so at least there’s that.

Then, you have the… lesser Rockstar games? That’s a little unfair, so let’s get into Max Payne and, uh… another example. The first Max Payne game looked slightly different in promotional material, but there is this very strange prototype build showcased in this video, which was first shared on the 3DRealms Discord server. It takes place in a tiny apartment and on its dingy balcony, and yes, that is South Park playing on his TV. While that mystery is being solved by… someone, the third game is a bizarre case due to how little of its cut material is documented. Very little exists on its Cutting Room Floor page or even, god forbid, any fanmade wikis, even though differences can be observed as early as its first public announcement. Aside from an early logo that was all white and using a more Dead Island-style font, Max’s tropical shirt was red and white rather than a range of cool and warm colors—humorously, it looks like the same shirt Mike from RedLetterMedia used to wear in old videos—and an early illustration seems to model him off Tim Gibbons from Max Payne 2 instead of James McCaffrey. The Cutting Room Floor page does feature concept art for locations like the morgue, and among these is the apartment of Max’s New Jersey neighbor Brewer. Whereas the warped fellow blew himself to kingdom come to save Max in the end, the blood-red screensaver on his computer with the silhouette of a rifle and the biblical quote “The meek shall inherit the Earth” seemed to imply that he was once meant to be portrayed more sinister in his intent. Emphasis on “more sinister”.

The other example is, surprise surprise, Manhunt. Given the standout quality of the game is… well… how utterly depressing and gruesome it is, I will get into its more mysterious qualities in another post, but these won’t count as beta content. See, it falls under the same category as Batman: Arkham Asylum and Half-Life 2 in that its prototype carries an ominous atmosphere when it comes to its concept art, UI elements, early models, and so on. For the record, the game’s narrative and the setting of Carcer City were radically different in the pre-development stage. Cash’s journey would’ve taken him up between the slums of the downtown areas, the middle-class midtown district, and the glistening lights of uptown Carcer, which progresses in concept art from the sickly blue and yellow combination of trash and sodium lights to the noir-inspired territory of the uptown plaza that borders on the futuristic. This concept art’s comparable to a gorgeously illustrated graphic novel like Sin City, and like Joel Schumacher’s 8MM, the progression in setting would’ve established the haunting theme of the worst offenders being at the top of the social ladder, not the bottom, hence the impunity a powerful filmmaker like Starkweather enjoys until the end (it can’t be reiterated enough that this guy was played brilliantly by Brian Cox of Braveheart and Succession fame, for Christ’s sake!) So, unless you find some weird things enjoyable, all that we see of Carcer City in the final game just makes you feel filthy as, other than the lack of any profound theme, literally everything except the mansion at the end is rundown and boarded up (however, even the attic of the estate is like that.) Of course, in contrast to Asylum’s partial and unplayable pre-alpha, there is a full build of this game that exists despite being incredibly bug-ridden. Instead of feeling ripped from a snuff film like the one the game follows, the main menu resembles an abandoned case file on the opposite side of the law, and Cash’s design and animations make the whole experience feel like a cheap iOS ripoff or one of those AI-generated mobile games. It also lacks the same gore, features a cut level titled Pain Factory alongside remnants of others, and contains a lot of placeholder dialogue. I recommend watching the full playthrough here as a reference for all the differences.

Just like the first game, I was only so discombobulated by Manhunt 2′s beta material after putting it off for my own mental well-being—neither of these games are for the faint of heart or anything I would define as being fun. In the words of developer Steve Walsh, the original premise was a horror comedy á la Texas Chainsaw Part 2, in which the lead would be controlled by a children’s show puppet named Frisbee. None of this made it in, but the set of Frisbee’s show was redone and added to the level Origins under the new title Frankie and the Freaks, and the fact that the final game went on to describe the victims of experimentation as “puppets” makes this context all the more fascinating. As for the main project, I’ve said here before that it was censored in a number of ways to get it rated M and back on store shelves, but what wasn’t divulged was that the uncensored content was part of a build leaked by a former employee of Rockstar Vienna. Does the studio ring a bell? No, not Keebler’s Vienna Fingers, but those are delicious. Max Payne 3 was at first worked on by this studio before it closed its doors, but it differs from this case in that it was more or less redeveloped from scratch with astounding changes to its setting, writing, and presentation. Beyond cut weapons and some executions, Manhunt 2 simply had its story restructured, which I can say is all the better for it in a chronological sense after having watched its original level order restored. Multiple mods have sought to replicate two leaked builds including the first one mentioned, but none have done it nearly as well as The Vienna Cut. It sees the return of the intended level order for as confusing as it is, but more than ever, attention needs to be handed to the added cutscenes. The first FMV from the Vienna build acts as the startup sequence while the final intro plays before the first level Awakening, and frankly, I don’t care that Danny’s played by someone else, as it’s a perfect introduction to the narrative in its narration, pacing, and unstable aesthetic. Then, there are two FMVs that play therapy session tapes of either Danny or Leo, which become the intros for their respective good and bad endings in The Vienna Cut. Not only is their usage in the mod perfect, but these things can otherwise only be found on the game’s still-active official site, and the quality of the writing they put on display is more than on par with that of the game. They succeed at accomplishing what the game seeks to do, which is painting Danny as one of the most tragic and underrated Rockstar protagonists (his tape ends with him frantically trying and failing to keep his memories from vanishing in real time) and making you terrified of Leo beyond expression (his ends with him breaking loose and attacking Dr. Whyte, the execution of which echoes the end of The Blair Witch Project.) Can you imagine putting in a performance on this level and finding out only 0.0001% of the human population knows about it?

“I want to think about puppy dogs and fuckin’ football, but all I see are six things I can use to kill you right now.”

– I might need a few days to recover from that.

Beta Content: Misc. Games

Although the PS1 predated me by a longshot, Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro has a couple of the more famous restored beta assets in the past year, and this brings us back to 9/11. No, that’s not the setup for a dark humor bit. The last fight was meant to take place at the height of the World Trade Center, but you can work out what happened there in your head. Beyond that, though, another surprise involving this same game came late last year, that is a lighthearted removed scene of Spider-Man meeting Thor upon Electro’s defeat. Of course, if we’re going to stick to Spider-Man—I don’t discuss him nearly as much as I should, considering he’s my favorite Marvel hero next to the Hulk—you have the adaptation of the first Raimi movie, which I only remembered until a few days ago for the black and red grid acting as the tutorial level’s skybox (this was one of those games I’d play with an old friend and/or neighbor of mine in Pennsylvania, as discussed here.) They managed to sign on both Tobey Maguire and Willem Dafoe for the roles of Peter and Norman, respectively, but as I just learned, neither actor puts in much of a performance until the latter hams it up once more as the Goblin. In fact, Bruce Campbell, the star of Raimi’s Evil Dead who narrates the tutorial, acts far better and is genuinely funny! This was in 2002, back before games like GTA: Vice City introduced the caliber of Hollywood-level voice casts that we’re fortunate to be the norm now. Video games just weren’t taken seriously yet by major stars, but in the case of voice actors for whom these roles are their bread and butter, most like one Mr. Josh Keaton clearly did. For the most part, this guy has been the Kevin Conroy of Spider-Man in animated adaptations like The Spectacular Spider-Man, but when they signed on Tobey Maguire for this title in particular, whatever Keaton recorded before he left the project became lost… except for his Harry Osborne lines. See, the game has a neat “Goblin Mode” feature that not only makes the Green Goblin playable, but it tells of Harry donning his father’s suit and finding out his secrets, basically rewriting the story as soon as the cheat code’s entered. Keaton lends his voice to this mode, and by some ripple in the fabric of the entertainment industry, he sounds at least five times better than Maguire. The more you know.

Moving on, though, I’ve gone over the Mafia series before on this blog, but probably not enough of Mafia II. See, that game practically aims to gobsmack you with its hoard of beta content—a lot of this includes cut missions—but the most critical would’ve spared players the nihilistic final ending. Before Mafia III revealed Vito’s buddy Joe as having been kept alive as Leo Galante’s chauffeur, the implication of this ending was his inevitable execution as he wasn’t part of the agreement Leo came to with Vito. Granted, the sigh of relief the third game allowed us to heave was an afterthought, as remnants in Mafia II’s files insinuated that Vito would have broken the agreement to save Joe and hunt down all of their remaining enemies. This was all restored via the popular epilogue mod, but this was never updated for the definitive edition, as far as I’m aware. Look, I’m not about to give The Old Country hell, as it seems to be another Mafia III situation where it gets by on the narrative but falters on the gameplay, but I can imagine the epilogue mod being far more enjoyable in a general sense. That and the Friends for Life mod, but we’ll save that for another post.

Hey, remember Duke Nukem Forever? Well, I thought it was pretty okay minus the excessive immaturity, but is that not a tradition with this series? Well, that and constantly stealing action movie one-liners (“Hail to the king, baby” from Prince of Darkness, “Sometimes, I even amaze myself” from Star Wars, “I like to kick ass and chew bubblegum” from They Live, etc.) Regardless, it was bought out by Borderlands‘s own Gearbox Studios after the dissolution of 3DRealms, who intended to release the game all the way back in 2001 before it entered development hell. Funny enough, the game was eventually released in 2011, ten years after the intended release date, but those who relish the series beyond the fact that Duke’s actor played both Omega and Big the Cat in Sonic Adventure and Heroes always wished to see the game as it was once envisioned. However overpassionate they might be, they got rather lucky when a short video of the prototype was submitted to the nightmare realm that is 4chan by a mysterious hacker group alongside a message that was as cryptic as it was strangely wholesome. The full build was leaked on May 10 of that year, and although I’ve yet to play either that or the 2D sidescroller prototype from 1996 that was leaked thereafter, the level of interactivity seems comparable to that of the official release, which is not, in fact, an insult.

“Duke is coming. Here’s a taste. Happy Mother’s Day, /x/!”

– The friends we made along the way.

Wait… uh-oh. Did I just say “4chan”?

Of course, there are some bases to cover with the games brought up in the first post. In the case of Super Mario Sunshine, a more faithful recreation of the Spaceworld 2001 build than ever has been released in the form of Portable Productions’s first demo for Super Mario Sunshine 2001, which carries the same surreal “liminal space” vibe described in my post on that aesthetic here, but even more progress has been shown on her channel since. The more notable changes include enhanced fog and textures, a new model for the human girl Nico that better matches the design of female Mario characters (I somewhat prefer the demo model, though), and a Dolpic Station platform for the Delfino Express where you can meet an older second girl who likely acts as Nico’s mother. This can be inferred via unused text for the scrapped missions involving her, the first of which was to find and bring her back to her parents. A game with subtle ties to Sunshine was Luigi’s Mansion, but considering I only played it for about five minutes when I was six before shutting it off out of sheer terror, the most unsettling detail is the one that intrigues me now, and it’s not Bowser’s head popping off to reveal King Boo—it’s the game over screen. This is at least presumed to be its purpose, as it closes the official trailer I just watched in a GameCube interactive demo disc collection and sees Luigi becoming, uh… I don’t know, clinically depressed? The way he’s torqued into a hollow shell has led to speculations that he was either (a) zombified or (b) embedded into the mansion for eternity as a ghost à la Jack Torrance. Either way, it never ended up being implemented, but Portable Productions has spearheaded a second beta restoration mod for this game. Whether this event is a planned or finished addition, I have no idea.

A Story With No Ending

Queue The Devil Inside. Just kidding, that movie’s only ever talked about so critics can say it doesn’t have an ending because that’s its only noteworthy quality. Lost media and beta content, on the other hand, is a gift that keeps on giving because there will always be more to uncover, and even if some is never, ever found—and much of it won’t be—the slow learning experience of finding out more about it is comparable to mindfully eating a well-composed meal with chopsticks. We’ll probably never see The Day the Clown Cried or Spider-Man vs. Kraven the Hunter in full, but honestly? They just wouldn’t retain the same magic if we were to see them in full. Hell, a short tech demo for the PS1 Spider-Man game was pitched by New Level Software in 1998, and now that it’s seen the light of day, well…

More than anything, what lost media and beta content reflect is that there’s a story to every piece of media, and they often tell us more about the people behind them than the pieces of media themselves. You have the tangled mess of A Day With SpongeBob with cagey alleged employees, potential money laundering, and even pointers to sexual message parlors; on the other hand, there’s TV8 Kids’ Fun Fest, the true name behind the obscure and unsettling Pink Morning Cartoon, and namely how it preserves the wholesome memory of a devoted mother and pastor; and in a future post where I’ll be addressing my curiosity with morbid subject matter online, some terrifying pieces of actual found footage will have their own intricate backstories explained in detail (spoilers: Graverobbing For Morons will not be one of them, but it will be mentioned briefly.) This all goes to show that it’s not just a niche online fascination—it captures stories about countless hours of lost work and the preservation of human history, as that’s exactly what it’s all about: art preservation.

Oh, but apparently, Blameitonjorge just talked about something called Go For a Punch for the eightieth time. It’s a fake anime someone on 4chan made up that involved nothing but undressed female characters who are locked in a bathroom and violently kill themselves after spilling poetic nothings. Unlike Clockman and Cracks, there’s no truth behind its existence at all. It became popular solely because it was anime. Looks like someone needs to reprioritize their lost media focus! Plus, I just mentioned 4chan again, so…