A developer named @Todddangit has found a lost Sega Saturn port of Digital Pictures' FMV boxing game Prize Fighter. And better yet, it is "100% playable".
Most of you will have probably heard of some of Digital Pictures' more famous FMV games in the past, like Night Trap or Sewer Shark, but you might not have heard of the studio's ambitious attempt at making a stylish Raging Bull-esque boxing game about a young fighter named "The Kid". The game featured appearances from famous character actor Dick Miller (Gremlins, The Terminator) and ring announcer Michael Buffer.
Prize Fighter was released for Mega-CD in 1993, but didn't gain anywhere near the same notoriety as some of Digital Pictures' other games. A Saturn port was expected to follow three years after, giving it another lease on life. But the port was cancelled for unknown reasons and it's just been presumed that the game was lost, despite being finished.
In 2015, Frank Cifaldi of the Video Game History Foundation tweeted that he had potentially the only copy of the game but that it was damaged and that he hoped potentially that the missing data could be replaced with the Sega CD version. But now it appears that @Todddangit and an unnamed friend have managed to uncover the full unreleased port for the Sega Saturn among a bunch of backup files.
Cifaldi tweeted in response:
"This is a huge relief. I've encountered a handful of pre-production games that were damaged beyond repair, but Saturn Prize Fighter is the only one that might have been one-of-a-kind. Thrilled that another source was found and that the data is preserved and playable."
This is obviously amazing news for fans of video game preservation, though it's important to note there are no plans to make it public yet.