Developers Losing Source Code

I figure some people (NZE? Frog? bVork?) might be able to help me out here.

I've heard of stories of a lot of Japanese developers losing source code; apparently R-Type III and Sonic on GBA are awful because they had to be rewritten?

And Taito, they apparently stated they lost the code to a lot of their arcade games?

I'm basically looking for more instances like this, and if at all possible, sources saying so. A friend of mine is writing a paper for a class, hah. I'd especially love to know where the Sonic rumors came from.

Sega losing the source code to Sonic 1 wouldn't surprise me. This is the same company whose execs turned down Yuzo Koshiro for a new Streets of Rage because they weren't familiar with the franchise.

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Originally Posted by Melf

This is the same company whose execs turned down Yuzo Koshiro for a new Streets of Rage because they weren't familiar with the franchise.

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Really?

Hah! That makes me giggle.

Supposedly Sega doesn't have the source code to the majority of their SMS and Genesis games.

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Originally Posted by Shin Johnpv

Supposedly Sega doesn't have the source code to the majority of their SMS and Genesis games.

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Where the fuck did they go?

Tell your friend to buy the new Edge with Miyamoto on the cover. Their Japan section talks about this topic and would be better than "I heard..."

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Originally Posted by Brisco

Where the fuck did they go?

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Same place as their sales.

Zing!

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Originally Posted by Brisco Bold

Where the fuck did they go?

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They deleted it? The hard drives it was stored on got corrupted/deleted/died? The back up tapes it was on got lost/stolen/destroyed/erased?

Supposedly this is a common problem in Japan. Though it's not surprising, how many companies 20 years ago or so where regularly backing things up and keeping multiple sources of it?

My friend and I were talking about a similar topic to this just the other day. Pixar is re-releasing Toy Story 1 and 2 in the theaters in 2009 and 2010 in Digital 3-D. We were discussing how they would do it, would it be like Nightmare where a 3rd party takes the film and creates it in post, bringing in lead animators from the project to keep checking it out, or would they re-render the whole thing. I'm thinking its going to be done like Nightmare cause I would be surprised if they still had all the animation files, texture files, model files, etc etc to re-render it. I'm sure they still have the raw rendered image files, so they wouldn't need to scan in the negatives, but I would be surprised if they still archived all the files needed to render out the movie again. Then again they re-rendered Knick Knack not that long ago so maybe I'm wrong.

I wish Sega would lose more of those 3D sonic source codes.

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Originally Posted by kingoffighters

I wish Sega would lose more of those 3D sonic source codes.

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But those make money.