Me Rambling Incoherently About Yeah Yeah Beebiss I
Mar 28, 2021 4:02:20 GMT
dogpolygonrt66, VHSUnderground, and 3 more like this
Post by thatgamingasshole on Mar 28, 2021 4:02:20 GMT
So, just on a lark I swept back through some videos about lost media, and stumbled across the one that originally brought me into the Saw-like psychological thriller of finding lost VHS tapes from 1989 (a.k.a "Lost Media")
The LSuperSonicQ video about Yeah Yeah Beebiss I.
This bizarre game, simply because of the title but also because of my OCD hoarding issues, has become like a holy grail for me personally and I know I sound like a broken record bringing it up repeatedly but I just decided to consolidate some personal research I hammered out over the years myself.
So a quick rundown the events: the video in question.
Now, besides the fact this hits on a huge number of interesting points, three in particular make many of the "copyright trap" and "in-joke" theories collapse in on themselves in seconds. Firstly being that two separate companies with, as far as I know, no connection beyond their chosen professions wouldn't use the same in-joke for obvious reasons. Secondly, for similar reasons, they wouldn't use the same copyright trap and really I have no idea where THAT idea even came from since...what is there to copyright? They don't own the games, or even own a specific monopoly on buying and reselling the games, and they're in essence a pawn shop. Why would they even need a "trap" of any kind let alone one so absurdly complex that they would have to go to court, show papers and proof that this was a trap, all while filing some kind of libel suit(?) against another company foooor...what precisely? Thirdly and most obvious of all, if it were some kind of a trap then why on God's Earth would they use the same title, repeatedly, with one even shortening the title? More over even if we were to accept this, almost on a lark, then why remove it afterward? Had the "trap" been sprung? Was it Funco that sprang the trap, by I guess using the same list and shortening the name? Had some other nefarious domestic terror group copied the list?
There is literally no logic whatsoever in the idea it was any kind of joke or trap or any other such accusation.
Now here's some personal research...once, I forget even when or why (TLDR I have memory issues due to a head injury so some of my memories are a bit blurry) but one day I was rewatching the aforementioned video and I decided on a whim to literally pick two random games on the list. One was Titan Warriors, another was Nightmare on Elm Street, both of which I literally chose at random. Both, when I searched for them, came up as unreleased games. Which one would assume leads to the very real possibility that some of the games on these lists were unreleased. Perhaps. But, looking into it further, these games were not literally unreleased--they were fully made and had from what I understand either actual screenshots, working roms, or both. So were several other games, many of which were released but under wildly different names: Bionic Commandos, plural, became Bionic Commando, singular, and the game Zeta Gundam which is listed in the Play It Again list was released as Mobile Suit Gundam Z: Hot Scramble. Both of these games were released, and since actual screenshots and in one case an actual, functioning rom existed for Nightmare and Titan Warrior this adds a different layer entirely. And to be clear, keep in mind that I swear to God I chose ALL of these titles at random, just hit my finger on a given title on the lists and searched for it on google by name. Another game I looked up, only just recalled, was Zombie Master which again was actually made from what I can tell, but never released overhere, as it was a localization.
Anywho. One of the major points in LSSQ's video and one that really struck me was this...
These were lists which had completely different prices, for games that were meant to basically be pawned. So someone had to literally parse through this crap and find prices for the games. Since both Nightmare and Titan Warriors were announced, but never released, and given that even today games magazines (the like two that still exist lol) and websites are sometimes given UNFINISHED copies to review and both games appeared in magazines as far as I can tell, it's within reason to say they existed and were intended to be sold and resold at some point. Titan Warriors having an available rom makes this even more likely, and there is a ton of info about both Mobile Suit Gundam: Hot Scramble and Bionic Commando, showing they were not just fully made and released but fully reviewed and sold and resold. So that means whoever made this list expected Yeah Yeah Beebiss I to be released sometime in the months they were listed. And both listed them before they were pulled. One pulled in October and one in December, which aren't that far apart, meaning they likely expected or were told, probably by a magazine or someone working for the company, that the game had a specific release date(s) that it missed for some unknown reason. Also, to hammer this home, I have more than one old gaming magazine from around the same time, i.e the 90's, that has actual ads for Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill, a game which was never released but still advertised in magazines. In fact I have magazines with several ads, again from the 90's, which involve games that either didn't exist or spent a lifetime in development hell. So the idea that these companies sent either unfinished prototypes or just outright told lies about what was coming down the pipe and Funco and Play It Again were just following orders is not only possible but plausible.
Now here is where it gets crazy. A lot of people look at the name, and think it sounds insane or it MUST be a mis translation of some other name. Again, perhaps. This is where the recent "Rai Rai" theory pops in, even though it stretches credibility with the idea that someone would assume "baby" is translated to "beebiss"...never mind no number is connected. Also why even add "Rai Rai" what would be wrong with JUST saying Family Trainer, or Baby Trainer even, which again includes no "I" but would at least be more accessible to English audiences who presumably would be the ones buying this localization if it had ever happened. That argument is good, but it collapses into dust faster than Lot's wife the moment you start asking "why?" more than once. And then we have the bizarre, logical reach around that it was some kind of mix up with Super Pitfall, and sorry if this sounds harsh, but thatt's so fucking absurd it doesn't bear discussing. Personally, I genuinely believed it was Dweebers for a LONG time because it sounds so much like Beebiss, but eventually it was revealed that's just not possible since the dates would be way off, Dweebers was likely canceled, and it would never explain the "Yeah Yeah" part or the roman numeral at the end. So what possible explanation is there.
Well here's my own insane ramblings. Much like what the abovementioned LSuperSonicQ video says, this was intended as a game TRADE IN list, which again is basically a game pawn shop. That means someone both genuinely believed this game would, sometime in that one year time period, be released and likely later that year, and then pulled the listening when a full year passed and it didn't come out. They had to have actually seen this game, or been told about it, to list different prices and info and as mentioned even bold the title to imply it may have a longer wait time for availability. Then we have the later list, for Funco, which shortens the title to Yeah Beebiss I. Now, here we have my own personal theory.
This game has to have existed, in some form, either as a theoretical prototype (like Nightmare on Elm St.), a functional rom (like Titan Warriors) or as an actual released title with a different name (Zeta Gundam, Bionic Commandos) and there is an actual way to even explain this.
Yo! Noid.
This was a video game that was, originally, released in March 1990 as Kamen No Ninja, and was localized to the rest of the world in November 1990 as Yo! Noid, based on the character from various Pizza Hut ads who had become a popular, Max Headroom like mascot. The game in it's original form was likely being developed sometime before, in 1989, though I couldn't nail down a date. But even then, given the low level of game tech they had, it must have taken about a year to make. And Pizza Hut must have taken some time, possibly the same time, to localize it for their title, Yo! Noid. Also let's just look at that title...Yeah Yeah Beebiss I...you're a Japanese games developer who is having a game localized by a US pizza franchise, and you speak English as well as a US pizza franchise speaks Japanese. So when trying to translate the title to someone, having perhaps no real grasp of what "Noids" even are but some basic understanding of how Yo! is used in slang, you understandably screw up (or even more likely the guys at Play It Again and Funco screw up) and Yo! Noid gets misconstrued into Yeah Yeah Beebiss I and later just Yeah Beebiss I. Now again I have no idea what Beebiss is even a reference to, the likely explanation being that neither side knew what the Hell the other was saying and it just came out garbled like that. However, Yo sounds almost identical to Yeah and the I, which me and most people figured was a roman number one, may have been a failed attempt at an exclamation point or even signifying it when originally listed and simply mistakenly assumed to be a number one. This would also explain why the Funco list shortened it from Yeah Yeah Beebiss I to simply Yeah (singular) Beebiss I, because it's not Yo Yo! Noid it's actually Yo! Noid and in one of the most incompetent attempts at translation since Vegeta screamed impotently about the number 9000, they decided to take the already mangled title and scalp it further down into just Yeah Beebiss I. Also, despite both of these lists hitting on the 1990s, neither lists Yo! Noid AT ALL just the miscategorized Yeah Yeah Beebiss I.
Soooo...it would perfectly fit in the time frame, and explain why the title was removed after the Yo! Noid game was released, because they realized their mistake. Also, keep in mind, the Yo! Noid game and the character Noid eventually vanished because a nutcase also named Noid IRL...yes seriously, he was named Noid...went on a murder-suicide rampage because he believed Pizza Hut was mocking him in their commercials. And no, I swear to God I didn't make that up. And yes I understand it sounds like a creepypasta. But here's the actual article to prove how God likes to troll mankind sometimes.
So that's my theory. This is just me rambling incoherently, but it actually offers a very real explanation, which I believe fills in some possible holes the others don't. Yeah Yeah could literally just be a non-English speaker trying to approximate Yo as used in English slang, what we assumed was a number one is actually a very, very poorly done attempt at an exclamation mark (as far as I can tell none of the other games listed had them, so this may have been the best they could do) and frankly Noid may again have just been a non-English speaker not understanding what a pizza franchise's mascot was called. I mean, shit as I sat here writing this I can even imagine that Beebiss may have genuinely been a mistranslation of "pizza" because it sounds similar and someone may have literally just asked "the Hell is a noid?" and received an impenetrable answer they interpreted as..."Oh, uh, ok I guess it means...peezis? Be...bezis? Beebiss? Fine. Whatever." Another possibility for the Beebiss catastrophe is that since Kamen No Ninja was the original title, it may even be a terrible mistranslation of THAT, though again the more likely answer is something like someone asking what a "noid" is and not understanding the answer and/or not giving a damn. And this, plus the dates for both the game's development and marketing and actual releases, matches up with when the Yeah Yeah Beebiss I title was pulled after the companies released their mistake and perhaps even because they saw it was miscategorized and when they did they figured out not just where it should be but what the ACTUAL title was supposed to be. Everyone on both sides of the Pacific was caught with their pants around their ankles and just put Yo! Noid up there where it belonged. As God intended.
Anyway, feel free to punch holes in this theory any time you want to. I'm not even saying this is the answer, but to be frank this makes a Hell of a lot of sense, and actually explains several bizarre plot points. If the wall of text above is too unwieldy, here's the TLDR: the name can be realistically traced back to Yo! Noid, a game which acted as both a showcase for a pizza company's mascot and the localization of a Japanese platformer called Kamen No Ninja, and it's likely "Yeah" was an attempt at "Yo" made by someone unfamiliar with English slang, and the "I" may have been a hilariously failed attempt on Play It Again/Funco's part to make an exclamation mark.