LOST: Space Channel 5 MTV Pilot

I'm willing to help. Would you be willing to help me with something?

So I caught wind of this topic on twitter from LSuperSonicQ and couldn't stop myself from looking in to this, so here's what information I've found so far:

The first thing I did was visit the link of the original blocked video. From there, I went to the original uploader’s (NeoGoemon’s) channel.

After this, I went to the Wayback Machine to see what I could find. The first screenshot of NeoGoemon’s channel was taken on September 16, 2007. The video of the pilot is listed as uploaded on his channel, but upon clicking on the video’s link it brings you to a snapshot of the video from April 08, 2020 in which it has also appears as blocked by Viacom (B_Viacom). This was the only snapshot of the video that appears to be archived.


The next snapshot of NeoGoemon’s channel was taken on March 6th, 2008. I didn't notice anything different in this capture, and for some reason hadn't thought about checking the description of his videos (either on the current version of his channel or any archived ones).


The third snapshot of NeoGoemon’s channel was taken on January 9th, 2010. This time, there’s was something that jumped out at me. This is when YouTube started featuring your most recently uploaded video smack dab in the center of your channel, with the featured video on NeoGoemon’s channel at the time being “Wii Sports - Koji Kondo vs Masahiro Sakurai!” , which is still up and live to this day. In the description of that video, NeoGoemon states that “Koji Kondo (the well-known Nintendo composer), and Masahiro Sakurai (legendary game designer who created Kirby and Super Smash Bros), play a round of Wii Sports: Tennis! I got the opportunity to meet with Masahiro Sakurai afterwards. He was very patient and friendly!” Alongside this bit of information, he lists a fan-site he owned and operated called www.masahirosakurai.com, which he "opened in Sakurai’s honor". The link to the website is dead as of now.

However, snapshots of the site still exist on the Wayback Machine, the very first of which was captured on September 28, 2007. Upon clicking the banner that allows you to enter the site, it brings you to a news feed.


And if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page, you get a link to NeoGoemon’s personal website: JamesMontagna.com. That name may ring a bell for a few people. Keep that name in your head.

If you remember from the first snapshot of NeoGoemon's channel from 2007, the name listed on the channel was James. So with that, the information from his Masahiro Sakurai fan site, and the link to his personal site, NeoGoemon is definitely James Montagna.

Going to the first capture of the site from October 12, 2007, there really isn't anything there. Literally. I did some more skipping around in older archives, but didn't find anything useful. Then my brain had the obvious thought (looking back) to just. See if the website still existed, as the most recent screenshot of his site is from November 2020. And lo and behold, it's up. 



And he has a more information page. 



NeoGoemon, the person who originally uploaded the Space Channel 5 Ulala MTV News Now Pilot almost 15 years ago, is a director at WayForward and has worked there for a decade. He's worked on titles such as Shantae: ½ Genie Hero, Shantae and the Pirate's Curse
, Shantae: Risky's Revenge + Directors Cut, ,Silent Hill: Book of Memories and a bunch others.

From here, I looked up his twitter, @jamespopstar. It's probably a long shot, but I'm going to try and send him a message. I'll report back if I get a reply.

Small update: Figured I'd upload a screenshot of the message I shot him.

Hopefully we're able to get this back quickly. Worried about how the appeal will go considering Viacom had to have manually taken that thing down with intent to keep it down considering how long it was just floating out there.

I swear I remember RebelTaxi mentioning this once using footage from this upload.

Awesome, we got it back! I couldn't remember at all that there was a Gamespot watermark in the video. Just to be sure, I searched Gamespot and they don't seem to have it anymore so this really is the only copy. They put a lot of work into this. That's definitely the model and animations of Ulala from the first game. I wonder if Sega made the environment; that's clearly a modified Spaceport 9. Also it's appropriate she ends her broadcast by mentioning Michael Jackson.

Thanks a lot everyone for your help!

We did it! So glad this got found. Definitely archiving it on my hard drive and a few other places too. Maybe one day we'll find an HD rip of this as well.