If I remember correctly my uncle bought a Wii on launch day. Should I ask if he still has the manual? My family usually keeps the boxes and papers that come with our consoles in a closet.
My brother might have the disc somewhere in storage, he bought a Wii the week it came out in NA. I'll ask.
He wouldn't have the disc, ask him if he has a copy of the manual though. I haven't gotten a launch Wii manual and it might have some interesting info about the disc, he would not have a disc though unless he worked at a retail store around that time.
Also, I still need an answer to the original question.
I found the website of the guy who dumped the Startup Disc NAND, it has every single image from the NAND including some text I didn't think to dump. The text in question reveals that the Startup Disc has no program code and is just a update partition with System Menu 1.0 and updated IOS9 on it, both of which are not lost. However, the disc itself is still technically lost, and I haven't figured out how to get the additional screens revealed through the NAND dump to show up, so I can't examine their behavior. In any case, does this count as found media? I mean, we know (or at least very educated guess.. I can't confirm 100% that it's System Menu 1.0 and updated IOS9, but it's most likely that) what's on it, but the whole package isn't found. This is a strange case, so I want some input.
Found a Russian site with some new info - Google Translate gives this:
Mysterious Wii Startup Disc, which appears in the scope of delivery of the new console from Nintendo, in fact, used to run the system. Before turning on the console for the first time you will have to insert the disc and flash attachment for your region. Wii Startup Disc will be available in three versions, and depending on what kind of disc you put, the game of the region will work on your system - According to our colleagues from Kotaku.
This is a hard one.. the obvious answer for how dedicated I am to it would be the Startup Disc, but honestly it isn't that interesting, the contents are pretty much already known it's just a case of the sheer mystery of it all. In terms of something that I actually want to see, probably the cancelled direct sequel to Mario 64.
Not to be that guy, and I'm willing to help with this and making articles for these, but you won't get much luck here. Most people here are only interested in lost cartoons and stuff.
Interesting picture, but no- that doesn't even look like a real disc in that image, probably just a prop. We sort of know what it looks like, since there is a tiny low-res image of it in the Startup Disc screen (I ripped the assets and posted it on the page). It looks completely different than that, and the account by the Reddit user who saw the disc didn't mention the massive Wii logo.
This. So many of the supposed "SpongeBob deleted scenes" are fake, they're just made up by kids on SBM or the SpongeBob wiki who want to be involved in a "search" for something (like all the dubs). That's why the SB deleted scenes article here on LMW is such a mess.
They were taken down? I remember watching a few of their videos out of the sheer weirdness of it, including one with a red haired naked guy talking about something/singing something (can't remember what)