Me Rambling Incoherently About Yeah Yeah Beebiss I | Forums - The Lost Media Wiki (2024)

Yeah Yeah Beebiss isn't the only incorrectly alphabetized game: "Alpha Mission" is before "Aigina's Prophecy," "Breakthru" is after "Burger Time," "Heavy Barrel" and "Hector Vector" are after "Hollywood Squares," "Jaws" is after "Jeopardy," the "Nintendo Game System" is listed first in the Ns (TBF this could be on purpose), "RBI Baseball" is before "Racket Attack" (maybe acronyms were placed first?). EDIT: "Bases Loaded" is also before "Baseball."

Aigina's Prophecy et al., Heavy Barrel, Hector Vector, and Yeah Yeah Beebiss are new additions so I can imagine them being added in the wrong places. However, Jaws was after Jeopardy in the old catalog, and bizarrely Breakthru was actually in the correct place there. Perhaps it was replaced with Bomberman and it was accidentally put back in the wrong place when it was added back in?

You counted correctly I think - I think the game you missed was "Return of Donkey Kong," that also disappeared from both unless it got another title that I missed. However, why was that and Yeah Yeah Beebiss the only games that got removed, and all the other nonexistent games stayed? "Battlefields of Napoleon" was not bolded and got changed to bold, but "Return of Donkey Kong" disappeared. And "Return of Donkey Kong" is not a game they made up since it was reported in other sources. Maybe because it was Nintendo so they had better sources?

The impression I get with the list is that it's not well managed at all, as it's got names listed in the wrong order, games that are unclear what it's actually referring to, and games that surely they couldn't have had "proper" plans to get by the time of posting the ad because several of those games got cancelled or didn't release until years later, yet they're on that list with both a new and a trade-in price already even though they'd have no real idea when they were releasing or even if they'd get them. If the only other one that was removed was "Return of Donkey Kong", which seems was last shown in 1988 by Nintendo before later getting cancelled, then to me that would suggest that Beebiss could be a similar situation - that they suddenly realized it wasn't going to be released at all, so removed it. It would be interesting to see when the other games that we know never released end up removed from later lists (if there are later lists).

I think at a certain point the dea of an independent, third party, outside source for these games and their information has been proven. Clearly Play It Again and FuncoLand were not generating this info internally, and I think at this stage it's all but certain some outside source was "gifting" them with this info. Which also means two things, in my opinion. The first being that Yeah Yeah Beebiss I was clearly a real game no matter how badly mistranslated, because there would be no reason for an outside party, who has no stake in either company whatsoever besides being paid for maybe/maybe not release dates, would go through the trouble of any kind of "joke", "trap" or "placeholder". None of the other games are, and some which were never even released, where not placeholders. So someone either intended or believed a game with that similar title was on the way and told them. The other near certainty at this point is whatever this game was, it must have either been released, perhaps under a different title, or been made because except for a few prototypes all the games are available either as roms, unlocalized or fully released. So at a bare minimum a prototype or some kind of art exists, and likely a full rom or actual game. Which again puts the idea of any kind of "placeholder" on the back burner completely.

Now, while contacting Play It Again or what remains of it, or better FuncoLand which was a larger company, is extremely valuable I also think finding out whatever this outsider third part (possibly a magazine) is just as important because if any records exist on that end it would probably offer a direct answer.

Ninja Edit: the reason why I say "probably a magazine" is because I have to reiterate I can literally go down stairs in my home and in minutes find issues of Gamepro and computer magazines...yes I saved them all, I have a hoarding disorder, don't judge ;_;)...and they have several adds for games that were cancelled or never released. So some kind of magazine with "insider knowledge" is a real possibility and at this point an outside third part source for the game listings has basically been proven, imo

So now that we have more evidence of it just being a game, we gotta figure out what is more likely:
1. Is it a mistranslated game?
2. Is it a canceled game?
3. Is it under a different name?
4. Can Yeah Yeah Beebiss 1 be an actual game that was never released? (Also is bootleg impossible? I asked earlier)

I'm really glad more came out about these lists, that was sorta my problem in the beginning, it was that we didn't know enough about the lists. I mean we still don't know about WHO the 3rd party could be (not something likely we will find out though right?), this mystery feels more tangible to me now though.

Something I've not seen mentioned before - the delivery times given for "Play it again". The text description in that ad says that they'll deliver games within 30 days...but they'll deliver bolded games within 40 days and If they can't, they'll refund and give a 10% discount. It seems very odd that they'd be so confident in their ability to get those games within 40 days, especially when it appears most of those games that are "coming soon" get released well beyond 40 days after the ad was posted (they're still there 3 months later). They must have meant a lot of orders had to be refunded each month because they hadn't released yet.

Doesn't help really but it's just baffling.

The thing is, even completely incorrect games like "Caracresta" and "Hulk Hogan" outlasted Yeah Yeah Beebiss (and Return of Donkey Kong) on the list. I think a good guess could be that perhaps Play it Again knew that the name sounded weird and thus were actively skeptical of the game's existence, and after not being able to find any data on Yeah Yeah Beebiss they took it off the list. Funco though didn't get the memo and kept it on I guess.

While you're all correct that the evidence of an outside source suggests it's not an intentional mistake by Play it Again, that Yeah Yeah Beebiss vanished from the list the same month Funco started using the name could be evidence it was a copyright trap. But I admit that explanation doesn't add up since a) there's plenty of other evidence that Funco copied Play it Again and thus they probably wouldn't have needed a copyright trap, b) that it was the same month probably doesn't mean much since I imagine those magazines took some time to produce and c) if it was a copyright trap, it didn't do anything since Funco kept on using YYB in their catalog, but if it didn't matter to Play it Again why would they have removed it anyway?

I think knowledge about how these magazines were put together would help - did companies buy the ad for a certain number of issues, and when that was over they replaced it with a different ad? That would make sense seeing as how the ads only changed in big bursts. Even how the ads were made would help - were they made via early computers or using traditional cut and paste methods? (apparently, before computers ads were cut out and pasted onto a board, which was then copied)

By 1991 though, Play it Again had seemingly dropped all of the obviously incorrect games from the list (although TBF I didn't check them all): archive.org/details/Electronic_Gaming_Monthly_18/page/n97/.

Are people not looking for games on other systems in the first place? There's nothing I saw on the list that implies they're all just SNES games available from them, it says Sega, Nintendo and Atari games in the description.

It does, but that particular list is of NES games. As the dominance of the NES ended, they started adding co-entries for other systems, but this list is clearly supposed to be a list of NES games.

nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/1989

So here are a list of NES games that came out in 1989. Three things stood out to me:
1. Could it have been a baseball game? A TON of baseball of baseball games came out in 1989.
2. There's a game called TwinBee 3: Poko Poko Daimaō and I dunno why it stood out to be me, maybe it's that "bee" sound. I dunno why the 3rd one would possibly release in the US when the other didn't though.
3. There's an unlicensed game called Baby Boomer on the list and there's zero info about it. I do not know how Baby Boomer would become Yeah Yeah Beebiss though.

If not Rai Rai or any of these, then I'm still thinking a baseball game? Baseball sounds more similar to Beebiss in my opinion.

It's apparently been said that it isn't Color Dreams's Baby Boomer.

Do you know how it was eliminated? People stopped saying it was Dweebers and when I asked why, turns out there wasn't a good reason so I gotta scrutinize.

Well, apparently someone looked into the game list, & there was no other mention of any unlicensed NES games, so that ended up ruling Baby Boomerout. Plus, looking into the game's code doesn't mention the name anywhere.

Hi guys. Just wanted to throw my two cents in about the theory from OP about beebis being a mistranslation of pizza. That would be highly unlikely, since the japanese word for pizza is literally pizza (ピッザ). So it's not like if someone said "it's pizza" that they wouldn't know what it was, since the word is the same in both English and Japanese.

Edit: also, it's probably already been brought out,but the way beebiss is written, if you were to pronounce it in japanese, it would sound like ベービッス beh-bee-soo, or "babies."