It's not simply a matter of finding where the game is, it's finding out if it even was a game to begin with.
We don't know if it was a copyright trap, a typo, a canceled game, etc.
And recently we haven't had any leads to go off of.
Maybe we need to regroup our thoughts.
So pretty much we don't know if Beebiss exists/what it is, and the only time it appeared was for several months in some late 1980s gaming magazine ads. The ideal solution would be to contact either the ads in which Beebiss appeared in, or the magazine that housed the ads.....of course, this is pretty much an impossibility since all of that is defunct now.
GameStop did end up buying Funco (one of the ads that listed Beebiss) so technically.....we could go through GameStop channels and hope it leads back to Funco employees and we could link that all the way back to the 80s and the author of the original ad. But...who knows were those employees are nowadays, and it's likely they wouldn't even know anything about it.
One thing that sticks out in my mind is how Frank from Lost Levels said something about the ad originating from a New York company or something. I don't know if he meant the known magazine was printed in New York or if some other entity created it, but if it's the latter that would be a somewhat helpful start.
Aside- in terms of the greater picture I feel like if more people knew about this search or even the existence of Beebiss in itself, it might bring forward someone who knows something factual, or at least more contributors who could point us in the right direction.
Or maybe this is just one of those things that stays a mystery forever............who knows.
It's not simply a matter of finding where the game is, it's finding out if it even was a game to begin with.
We don't know if it was a copyright trap, a typo, a canceled game, etc.
And recently we haven't had any leads to go off of.
Maybe we need to regroup our thoughts.
So pretty much we don't know if Beebiss exists/what it is, and the only time it appeared was for several months in some late 1980s gaming magazine ads. The ideal solution would be to contact either the ads in which Beebiss appeared in, or the magazine that housed the ads.....of course, this is pretty much an impossibility since all of that is defunct now.
GameStop did end up buying Funco (one of the ads that listed Beebiss) so technically.....we could go through GameStop channels and hope it leads back to Funco employees and we could link that all the way back to the 80s and the author of the original ad. But...who knows were those employees are nowadays, and it's likely they wouldn't even know anything about it.
One thing that sticks out in my mind is how Frank from Lost Levels said something about the ad originating from a New York company or something. I don't know if he meant the known magazine was printed in New York or if some other entity created it, but if it's the latter that would be a somewhat helpful start.
Aside- in terms of the greater picture I feel like if more people knew about this search or even the existence of Beebiss in itself, it might bring forward someone who knows something factual, or at least more contributors who could point us in the right direction.
Or maybe this is just one of those things that stays a mystery forever............who knows.
As hopeless as the fuckin' Mallow plush.
♪ Good day, good day, I'm glad you came my way... ♪
It's not simply a matter of finding where the game is, it's finding out if it even was a game to begin with.
We don't know if it was a copyright trap, a typo, a canceled game, etc.
And recently we haven't had any leads to go off of.
Maybe we need to regroup our thoughts.
So pretty much we don't know if Beebiss exists/what it is, and the only time it appeared was for several months in some late 1980s gaming magazine ads. The ideal solution would be to contact either the ads in which Beebiss appeared in, or the magazine that housed the ads.....of course, this is pretty much an impossibility since all of that is defunct now.
GameStop did end up buying Funco (one of the ads that listed Beebiss) so technically.....we could go through GameStop channels and hope it leads back to Funco employees and we could link that all the way back to the 80s and the author of the original ad. But...who knows were those employees are nowadays, and it's likely they wouldn't even know anything about it.
One thing that sticks out in my mind is how Frank from Lost Levels said something about the ad originating from a New York company or something. I don't know if he meant the known magazine was printed in New York or if some other entity created it, but if it's the latter that would be a somewhat helpful start.
Aside- in terms of the greater picture I feel like if more people knew about this search or even the existence of Beebiss in itself, it might bring forward someone who knows something factual, or at least more contributors who could point us in the right direction.
Or maybe this is just one of those things that stays a mystery forever............who knows.
Post by LSuperSonicQ on Sept 18, 2016 20:20:14 GMT
Well I was kinda just being ambiguous with the ending there; I think there must be some kind of way to further prove or disprove its existence. I'm just not entirely sure what that way is. Maybe it'll be like ADWSS and someone will post it to /v/ and a plethora of new information will come forth from there. I could give my sources another in-depth look or possibly try to contact some new people.
@radiant Lloyd Firefly has a good point about "bold faced titles coming soon". I still think this could be "Dweebers"; another lost game. "Dweebers" sounds a bit like "Beebiss", if you exclude the "r" from "Dweebers". "I" probably comes from that it was the first game in the nonexistent series. "Yeah Yeah" could be a translation error of "Super" or something.
Only one problem: "Dweebers" was slated for a Game Boy release, ruling out this theory. But, who knows? It could of been slated for a NES release, as well. "Yeah Yeah" could also be part of the title for the nonexistent NES release. Think "Super Dweebers", probably an extension of the original, like "Super Pitfall".
As much as I'd love to imagine YYBI being its own game (how could you not be intrigued by a title like that?), this honestly seems like the most likely possibility to me. But we can dream, right?
Post by LSuperSonicQ on Sept 19, 2016 18:44:56 GMT
I just remembered a theory thatgamingasshole had from a while ago which I neglected to reply to. It had something to do with the fact that many other games on the lists never released/were canceled.
The only difference with the other games, is that I believe their names were final/near final, and there was nothing else unidentifiable on the list.
What I'm getting at; I'm thinking Beebiss is probably a typo, but of an unknown game (that was never released of course).
While the Dweebers theory would fit pretty well into this scenario, the fact that it was announced and known about makes me think such a gross error couldn't have happened, but I guess that part comes down opinion.
Even so, I'm not sure how we'd ever be able to identify an unreleased game that we don't even know the real title of.
I think at the core of this mystery the key would be to get in contact with a source. Think about it- someone had to have typed that listing- it didn't appear out of thin air.
It's funny you say that because they actually liked and added my video about Beebiss to one of their playlists, so they know it's a thing.
If they liked my video that much then yeah it would be helpful for them to like retweet it out or something, since I did all the work already. I just don't have the massive attention like they have.
Post by thatgamingasshole on Sept 20, 2016 10:52:40 GMT
I sent an extensive email with all the stuff we know about Beebiss, and some research I did to Unseen 64 and they kind of responded with "Uh...ok cool bro". So I have no idea if they know or not.
Think about it- someone had to have typed that listing- it didn't appear out of thin air.
This.
This is the real key. Someone has to find a way to contact one of the people who worked at Funco or something, someone somewhere must know that this list came from fucking SOMEWHERE!
Post by LSuperSonicQ on Sept 20, 2016 18:44:35 GMT
Between my video and your email I'm convinced they know about it, but for whatever reason aren't very interested in it. In fact it doesn't seem like many people are interested in it at all. I'm guessing it's because at this point it's more of an urban legend type thing that requires work to uncover, and not an actual lost game you can just Google and get details for to learn about akin to a beta. I'm sure once we do all the hard work someone out there will put up a $hitty video and reap the rewards in ad revenue.
Aside, it's time to start digging deep and actually contacting some people. So here's what I have leftover from when I made my video.
Frank Cifaldi from Lost Levels made a forum post back in 2009 about having "WAY more to say", but I Tweeted him recently and he's like "nah it's just a typo". So I still think he has more to say, or at least he used to think something else that maybe we could use to our advantage since this is LMW and that's just the way people on this site deduce. So maybe if someone contacted him again and asked about Beebiss in a different way it would be helpful.
In regards to Play It Again and Funco, Frank says that Play It Again is a New York based company, and we know that Funco was bought by GameStop in the early 2000s. Not sure if Play It Again transformed into a different company, or if there are any Funco trails still running through GameStop, but those are two outlets to also look into (and ObscurusDoom posted a business page to Funco a couple pages back).
The last thing I have to say about Frank and Lost Levels is that he claims the list in which Beebiss appeared on was generated in early 1989. How he knows this I have no idea, but it sounds really important because we could possibly figure out where the list came from if he knows when it was generated.
Now those are the most solid leads I have. However there are a few more details to look into.
There was a really empty reddit thread that asked if Beebiss appeared in any other gaming publication made mention of it. While Frank's info would lead you to believe otherwise, it's possible something in an old magazine could have been overlooked or has fallen into obscurity. It's not likely, but if anyone has any gaming magazines from 1989 to probably early 1990 they can take a look and see if there's any mention of it (or something that maybe sounds similar to it, or something that never came out, etc.).
Speaking of ads, here is an album (compiled by Lost Levels coincidentally) of what I assume is every known ad that Beebiss appeared in.
As some final thoughts, it seem like the Beebiss = Dweebers theory as well as Beebiss being a copyright trap are probably two of the most believable ones, however I'd still like more proof or evidence that either of those two ideas are what actually happened. There's definitely just as much evidence out there for the other theories as there are for these two.
I've pretty much soaked up everything from the first few pages of Google, but it's possible I missed something or someone can come up with a different idea or theory that I didn't think of after this refresher.
Essentially............befriend/try to get some more info out of Frank Cifaldi no matter how irrelevant he might think it is, and learn the channels of Play It Again and Funco and how that related to the current day.
Post by LSuperSonicQ on Sept 27, 2016 20:37:48 GMT
No.
Dweebers being Beebiss is just a theory that has evidence, but doesn't 100% prove they're the same game.
We need more history in regards to the magazine ads, but the only person I can think to contact is Frank Cifaldi who seems to not think much of Beebiss anymore.
Edit:
So I checked out the article comments right after I posted the above, and there was actually a new comment there which I think is important enough to discuss.
"Rai Rai! Baby Kyonshi no Amida Daibōken (来来! ベビーキョンシーのあみだ大冒険)
Like the raw translations of other jap-only games in the list(Zeta Gundam, Fist of the north Star), it's the only possible title.
Rai Rai = Yeah Yeah ベビ ー = Bebi 1 (not a ichi symbol, but very similar, someone fast translating manually would do this mistake)"
So essentially this comment is saying that Yeah Yeah Beebiss I was a translation error from a Japanese only Famicom Power Pad game.
I checked out the Rai Rai part and while it's not a direct "Yeah Yeah", I could see it being interpenetrated as that. The Bebi comes from "Baby", and like he said, the 1 isn't a 1 but could be mistaken for that.
I have to say that so far, this is the most believable translation error theory for Beebiss I've come across, (and I still don't think the game is a typo for a non-existent game/is a non-existent game).
Despite this I still have some questions about the game, like why was it the only Power Pad game to ever be listed in the ads. And also the Power Pad games released in JP and NA were 1-2 years apart. Since Rai Rai! was actually released in Japan in 1989, that means it probably wouldn't have hit the US until a year later, meaning it probably wouldn't have shown up in the catalogs so far in advance.
But since it never was released, maybe this is actually more reason as to why it could have been Beebiss?
Still not sure on the whole thing, but it's more info nonetheless.
Edit:
One last thing, don't talk to Frank Cifaldi about this. I've tweeted him a couple times with the theories and he just straight out denies them. So obviously he's not interested or so in denial about its existence he's not seeing the plausible connection here.
By his logic the game was just typed into the list out of thin air for no reason; that's like if I just typed okooskosk in the middle of this post for no reason.....It doesn't make sense that the name was crafted in that fashion.
Last Edit: Sept 27, 2016 22:35:30 GMT by LSuperSonicQ
No. By his logic the game was just typed into the list out of thin air for no reason; that's like if I just typed okooskosk in the middle of this post for no reason.....It doesn't make sense that the name was crafted in that fashion.