Lost Media Search Results
Since I'm unemployed I've been using my time to find leads to lost media. Today I looked for info on Dweebers and Gathers and I found some very interesting info
So something that I noticed that isn't mentioned anywhere is that Vic Tokai, the company tied to both games, is Japanese and the games they developed were first released in Japan (they had an American branch that translated and localized games other companies developed.)
Now theres a game that was released called Daedalian Opus, which I just learned was also made by Vic Tokai, and was developed at the same time as Gathers. I know this because one of the two screenshots we have of Gathers comes from a 1989 magazine page that also has the original name of Daedalian Opus listed next to it, Puzzle Road.
This was in vol 1 of Game Boy Magazine. Vol 2 features the second screenshot of Gathers, but I was not able to find the full page to look for other clues. However, I was able to find in the table of contents Puzzle Road listed among other games
So why am I focusing on Puzzle Road/Daedalian Opus? Its because the American box art resembles the art style of the Dweebers artwork.
And theres a good reason why they would look the same, Vic Tokai hired an artist named Lawrence Fletcher to make a few new covers to replace the Japanese covers for their American releases. The original Japanese release of Puzzle Road looked completely different
The first main point I want to make is that if Vic Tokai went as far as to make art for an American cover, then there must also be Japanese cover art out there.
The second point I want to make I realized right as I was making this post. The reason why we are struggling to find Gathers is because the name might have been translated incorrectly! The name as it appears in the magazine is
and when I went to Google translate, I put in
but I left out the dash in the middle, and when I added it in...
the games name might actually be Gears! I can't be 100% sure because i don't actually know Japanese, and it would make more sense for it to be Gathers because the point of the game is to gather things, but I still thought I should bring it up.
I think the final connection I want to make will cement the connection between Dweebers and Gathers. You see in the magazine that Puzzle Road and Gathers are listed next to each other. Well, our source for the Dweebers art also had another game listed
and they were the only two Gameboy games listed in the whole brochure! (this is a Vic Tokai brochure listing games from 1989 to 1990)
So Puzzle Road and Gathers were both announced at the same time as new Gameboy games from Vic Tokai, and Daelanian Opus in 1989 and Dweebers were listed together as the only two Gameboy games made by Vic Tokai in 1989/1990. I think this circumstantial evidence is admissible
