Thanks for the effort you put in over there, co. Is that one more of an active research effort?
Not as active as it was last year, but yeah, we did a lot of work over in that thread.
I wouldn't mind asking David a few questions, but I'm skeptical that he'd have much to offer. The man almost certainly responsible for the Beebiss listing was Robert Schwartz. And when I talked to him last year, he was not interested in discussing the matter.
Post by stintergalactic on Mar 3, 2022 17:49:03 GMT
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, almost nothing was more popular than the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles. Having spawned successful lines of toys, comics, movies, tv shows, and more! And, as with anything with this level of popularity, soon came an onslaught of imitators and knock offs. Some of the more notable of these copy cats include Biker Mice from Mars, Sewer Sharks, and Samurai Pizza Cats. But probably none are as infamous as the Psychic Opossums of Sizable Mass. Coming out of Austrailia, POSM was produced by Mr. Big Cartoons for ABC for Kids, and ran for 6 episodes in the summer of 1992. Despite the fact that reviews of the time seemed mostly positive, with one reviewer saying it was "probably the best show about psychic opossums ever made", the show never seemed to find an audience. Since that summer, there have been no confirmed re-airings of the program. While many seem to remember having seem the show, the only known footage to exist publicly, is the show's closing credits, having been ripped from a VHS tape that was set to record the show immediately following.
When asked about the show, the creators have said that the original plan was to launch a toy line to accompany the series. But the show's abrupt cancelation halted these and other merchandising plans. The creators have also come out and said that they currently don't posses or own any of the footage from POSM, with everything still belonging to ABC. When asked if there were any plans to release the series in the future, ABC only said "We are always in the process of examining our back catalogue, and trying to determine what holds a special place of interest to the public. When demand around a program or property grows, we then make the decisions whether or not to revisit and re-release any past material." Despite calls from online fan groups, there seem to be no plans for a home release.
Post by stintergalactic on Mar 3, 2022 15:58:26 GMT
The first thing I pirated was Vanilla Ice's album Mind Blowin'. It wasn't a very popular album, so it was hard to come across in the 90s. But there was a Vanilla Ice fan page that had all the album tracks hosted on their site as Real Player streams. So, I remember I had to stream the file, and run the audio to a cassette tape and capture everything in real time. And at the end of it all, I ended up with a really terrible sounding bootleg Vanilla Ice cassette tape, that I probably only listened to a few times before buying the CD off eBay.
Post by stintergalactic on Feb 24, 2022 20:04:35 GMT
I tend to watch a lot of Lost Media content on YouTube. Yesterday, my daughter asked me what video we were watching that covered the topic of Dragon Ball AF. That sounded familiar, but I couldn't quite place it. She said it was a 15-20 minute long video, that covered a few different lost media subjects. I scrubbed through some of the more recent lost media videos from the popular creators, but couldn't find anybody talking about this. I would just think she imagined this, but her memory of it seemed too recent and to specific to have been completely imagined. Here is part of our conversation..
Does anybody have any idea what video this is that she's talking about? It's really bothering me.
Post by stintergalactic on Dec 20, 2021 23:15:39 GMT
It's an interesting lead to follow, and I wish you the best. I hope it turns up something.
If I had to take my best guess as to where they got their information on games, though, I would imagine they got it from a variety of sources. Neil said they were into importing games from Japan too, so they probably had a lot of people and magazines they compiled information from.
Post by stintergalactic on Dec 17, 2021 19:53:14 GMT
There's so little info about Return of Donkey Kong out there. Every known mention of it is well documented online. And if you look through the publications that did mention RoDK, there's no mention of Beebiss or anything similar at all. The fact that appearances of RoDK coincide with YYB1 in the ads is probably the most interesting thing to happen to the search in a while, but it hasn't seemed to help much. It could very well be just a coincidence.
Post by stintergalactic on Nov 19, 2021 0:32:27 GMT
I got an update on this pretty quick. I managed to get in touch with the author of the Mental Floss article I mentioned above. This is what she said...
Unfortunately, it looks like the article gets cut off at the end, but I'm assuming the last fact on the list is where I got that piece of information. Doubly unfortunately, I have no idea where Diffuser got that piece of information, or how reliable that publication is."
She also added...
"Sorry for not being more helpful! I'm no longer at Mental Floss, but I think I might reach out and see if they'll redact that statement. It doesn't seem super reliable, and I hate the idea that a bad piece of info in one of my articles is being used by other publications."
She also still had her notes for that article, but they basically just confirmed that Diffuser was her source.
I'm going to try to contact the author of that article, and see if he has any more information.
Post by stintergalactic on Nov 18, 2021 21:36:27 GMT
I know there's been some debate about what counts as Lost Media, and whether physical objects can count. But I think I found an example that blurs the line enough to fall on the side of it counting as Lost Media. It is, after all, a Home MEDIA release of a movie.
Anyway, if you do a basic Google search to find the last Home Media release of a studio film, every site will say that it was the 1996 movie Mission: Impossible. I don't believe that this is true. The earliest mention I can find of this "fact" being stated is a 2015 Mental Floss article. Doing a Google search for before 2015 doesn't yield any mentions of this.
The most recent movie I could find with a Betamax release was the 1993 movie Point of No Return. That copy does appear to be an official release, just by looks. But it's interesting because the box for the movie and the label on the tape were clearly originally meant for VHS copies of the film. Still, I do believe that this was probably an official release, even if being a special low order print run. I also saw a guy in a forum thread who said he had a
So, what we have here is an Existence Unconfirmed Home Media release of Mission: Impossible. I don't think it exists, but I'd love to be proven wrong. If anything, though, we have a mystery as to why this is such a widely reported fact. And if Mission: Impossible wasn't the last movie released on Betamax, then what was?
I'm not sure how to best start this search. Betamax releases are not nearly as documented as VHS. But Beta fans do seem to be a dedicated bunch. I'm going to try to find some Beta "experts" and reaching out to them to see what I can dig up. Any other suggestions are most welcome.
Pardon my ignorance, but I must have missed this one. I didn't realize the LMA people were such bad eggs. Aside from their wiki being inferior, I knew nothing about them. This is super sad really, and I'm sure it soured some people's perception of our community as a whole.
Well, pardon MY ignorance, but what is LMA? Are we beefing with another lost media site? Because I'm ready to represent and throw down if I have to.
Post by stintergalactic on Sept 16, 2021 18:40:27 GMT
I did try messaging him on FB, but no dice.
There's got to be a way to get an interview request to David. He just seems reachable. My biggest concern is that I bet he doesn't have much info to share. I'm pretty sure if asked, he would just say something along the lines of "yeah, I used to collect information for our ads by seeing what was available on the market in magazines." And it would be very unlikely he would remember YYBI specifically. All that being said, I still want to ask that guy a few questions.
Post by stintergalactic on Sept 16, 2021 14:19:04 GMT
As far as I know, no one has spoken to David about this. I guess I'll reach out to Penny and David over Linkedin and see if either will answer some questions.
It's a pretty good channel that doesn't have as many subscribers as it should.
It's a shame that this search has stalled again. We just can't get in contact with the few remaining people who might shed some light here. I have a feeling, though, that the Robert Schwartz that I called and that we sent a letter to, actually IS the Robert Schwartz we've been looking for. I just don't think he wants to talk to us. Oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Post by stintergalactic on Jul 14, 2021 0:23:31 GMT
Now, nobody has been on Team False Listing more than me. But I will admit, the fact that YYBI appearances coincided with Return of Donkey Kong, does raise an eyebrow. It does make it seem like they could have been sourced from the same place.
We should really find all the magazines that reported on RoDK, and see if any of them mentions anything close to Beebiss.
The Yeah Yeah part I kind of touched on, but I keep going back to Yakyuu Ban. Assuming they intended it to be a baseball game, which as you mentioned would explain Beebiss, then it may literally have just be Yeah! Baseball or some variation. The only real issue would be assuming the "I" was originally an exclamation mark, and that's not even a real leap. None of these can be proven but this has far fewer leaps in logic, and to be frank there is no real counterargument. Unless we just clutch on this idea of a "trap" or a false listing, the simplest answer and the one that has basically no holes in the theory is that it's a mistranslation. Also keep in mind, several localized games had titles a step away from their actual Japanese titles, so again "Yak-Yuu" becoming "Yeah Yeah" and baseball being poorly written as Beebiss isn't even a leap in logic, it's barely a skip.
My main problem with the "Yakyuu" theory is that "yakyuu" itself means "baseball". So I could see an argument that Yakyuu can become Yeah Yeah, or I could see a stretch where Yakyuu became Beebiss. But probably not both in the same translation.