Fighters Lost in the Files - Rising Thunders "Hidden" Characters 

Thanks for the video. Your "mad conspiracy theory" at the end is dead on. We included the "Goodies" download to give y'all a taste of our grand vision for the game, especially Aegis and Gun, who we hoped you'd eventually find (which of course you did). RT was an 18 month race from start to finish, built by a dozen talented, passionate devs who love fighting games. While the journey ended too soon, it was an unforgettable experience and helped set the stage for Project L. By the way, the Goodies download also has concept art for all the mechs' pilots, who were planned but never made it into the game.

Incredible content. Now I care about unreleased characters and the people who made them more than I do about myself.

Poor Gun. He accidentally became an appropriate joke character for a game about giant mechs: a first draft prototype who somehow found the light of day and now has to contend with other, much more refined machines.

Shoutouts to Radiant for allowing people to get access to continue playing the game, no matter how small that fanbase is. It's a really cool thing to do, and is unfortunately an _very_ rare act of kindness in this era of online games being lost to time, never to be played or enjoyed again

What is very promising to me is that the Rising Thunder devs are now working on Project L, which already seems to be experimenting with similarly unique character ideas. I suspect that Riot bought the team and instantly set them to work on Project L, which should be a much bigger game. So for Radiant, things seem to be looking up.

The editing in this video is genuinely incredible

My dyslexia kicked me hard here, I 100% read "Fighting Game Lord of the Flies" and I was like... "Well, they made one on Le Mis, and LoTF does create potential scenarios where fighting game gameplay could work..."

I'd say part of the lack of knowledge about the discovery is is definitely because of Discord's nature as an information black hole. It's unsearchable/unindexable,information is locked behind communities with often esoteric inductment rituals many wouldn't want to touch and you just plain don't even know whether there is anything to look for,much less where it would be. Many similar things disappear into discord's event horizon,destined to be observed by naught but the single sensor technician that was staring at their moment of entry without any recording equipment.

aegis is my new favorite fighting game character of all time, thank you for introducing me to my new robot wife

Holy cow the visuals are crazy in this one. That Paper Mario party was wild Also really appreciate this video. I'm in the majority that mostly heard about rising thunder and then heard it was taken down. Would never of known about this and what a unique character honestly

im lost in your eyes babe, great video per usual

The Rising Thunder discovery reminds me how the internet basically ruined any sorts of self discovery in video games. I'm glad there's an actual modern example of gaming mysticism with Gun and Aegis.

idk man, with each new video, you further cement yourself as the new gold standard for gaming analysis videos, particularly with regard to FGs - well done m8

Didn't expect to watch a whole Netflix documentary with an incredible script and top notch editing. You can really feel how much effort is put in those videos

As someone who sees a fascination in experiencing unused content in games, the ending was touching. I thought this game looked awesome and worth trying despite the inputs that normally wouldn't appeal to me, and genuinely looked forward to its release. When I heard of its cancellation, I was pretty damn sad that a PC fighting game was now gonna be lost before I even knew it had available to the public due to it getting so little attention, and the community edition was something I'd never think was possible. Maybe, I will play it and experience the cool robot fighter I never could.

"This is the most overhead coded move I've ever seen in my life why does it not hit crouching" Hmm that Seth Killian name sounds familiar let me just... "Seth was recruited to join Capcom for the Street Fighter IV project" oh that's why

WAIT THE GAMES'S ALIVE?!?!? I'VE BEEN SEARCHING FROM 2020 FOR A COPY OF THE GAME, AND YOU'RE TELLING ME THERE'S NOT ONLY THE GAME, BUT A COMUNITY AND 2 EXTRA CHARACTERS!?!???! HOLY SHIT PD: im gonna spread the word as long as i have social media accounts, i WILL make someone play it

learning that almost all of the concept art was for aegis and gun actually made me cry they were probably the two people on the team were most passionate about and they didnt even get into the final game :((((

And here I thought this would cover multiple cutting room floor characters from different games. Instead I got a deep dive on a fighting game I never even heard of. And kept me interested for the 30 minute runtime. Good Job Leon, and I look forward to what new barrel you pull out next.

I will say tho, a move that traps the opponent in proximity block is actually a really cool idea, you're forced to the corner even if you don't get hit, I'd love to see a game expand on it

if you uploaded this on day of the dead on purpose that is so genius

I prefer getting lost in the sauce myself

Wow, I knew a lot about Rusing Thunder and it's history and support afterwards, but did not know about the 2 characters in the files.

despite never having touched Rolling Thunder and not planning to, i am now a Aegis main. Cool ass video, wonder how many Rolling Thunder-ism we'll see revived in Project L

Holy shit aegis sounds overpowered as hell! And it's honestly a shame that there wasn't any other examples of a character like this, one that is terrifying up close not because of incredible mixups but because of being a ridiculous wall of frame advantage.

the paper mario visualization was a great, GREAT reference that you did not have to put so much effort into making all of the assets, leon. genuinely good work with this one! great video.

great vid, I love this kind of stuff; I'll probably even like journal the emotional effect this kind of story has on me lol. shoutout to the devs, community, and bobzilla in particular for having the attachment and interest in finding the chars in the files and making them playable. a really unique case.

Your production value has only gotten more incredible. Thanks for what you do for the FGC

Literally couldn't give a rat's ass about fighting games, but I'll always tune in for leon massey vid. Keep it up dude! You got good content

This really feels like Leon’s love letter to Rising Thunder. A game that never got its chance to shine. Amazing work!

This was absolutely beautiful! After this video I've come to feel so attached to this game I've never played, and these two underdeveloped characters I've never before seen in action. I now treasure every completed asset or full fledged character that makes into the games I already loved so much more than I did before! Thank you, Leon Massey.

Aegis: [Has a scarf] Me: [Kamen Rider ost intensifies] Great job Mr Massey, and @inkblotJr (Good luck for Project L btw)

Mr. Massey really outdid himself on the presentation of this video. Every single transition, joke, demonstration etc. has a beautiful animation/visuals that clearly had a ton of work put in. This is definitely one of my favorite videos of all time already, really good job!

This was infinitely better than every video covering cut characters, except for that one documentary about Self from Nights into Dreams. Making games is really hard and nothing I’ve learned about the process has made it look any easier

Great editing, good music choice, great modeling, knocked it out of the park, definitely going to download Rising thunder then drop it because I have no one to play with

your storytelling has improved tremendously while still retaining your great comedic timing and editing, this is by far my favorite video of yours so far

Someday Leon will settle on the optimal speech pettern with palatable speed and finally blow up on youtube. I belive...

Incredible video, thank you so much for making it! You mentioned wondering about the team, so i wanted to give these folks some well-deserved shout-outs: Ky Bui, Mike Carr, Niles Tucker, Doug Prior, Brock Feldman, Charles Roman, David Baack, Roman Zimine, Doug Clark, Allie Strom, Stephanie Dee, and Patrick Miller. (Hopefully i'm not forgetting anyone!) With Char07, we were mainly exploring two things. Defensive projectile zoners tend to get a bad rap, so we wanted to build an expressly fair moveset where big payouts were rare and the struggle to control the match was real + apparent. Also we were experimenting with harder situational combos involving micro-walks and whatnot, where you could give up easy buffering to earn a bit more. Working on Char08 was really fun, lots of great ideas from the whole team. Those charge air heavies felt great the minute we tried them, and all the shield/armor effects were starting to look really cool. (Also there's a bit more to S3v1 that's hard to discover in training mode, but yeah S3v2 is the star of the show.) I'm really glad some folks got to experience these characters and got a few hours of fun out of them.

Noodle linked to this video and I started it in the background. Five minutes later, I stopped what I was doing and brought it back to the beginning so I could make it my main focus. 30 minutes later, and here I am saying that this is one of the most captivating video game history essays I’ve seen in ages. I have a newfound respect and appreciation for this game that I would have otherwise never have been exposed to and I salute all of the people who put their work into it. Can’t wait to check out what else you’ve produced. Thanks for what you do.

the production value on this is insane

Leon Massey videos are incredible. It's like my autistic boyfriend who rants to me about interesting things I never would've known if he didn't dump them on me with little to no warning.

This is your best video yet. Over the past few years, you've developed a much greater sense of finesse in terms of integrating humour within serious points. A while back, you asked if the Sequelitis influence was too direct. At the time, I'd have said yes. Since then, you've really come into your own. Great work.

this story reminds me a lot of gigantic’s untimely demise and all of that games unused content. Seeing characters that range from almost at the finish line (in gig’s case much closer than aegis and gun) to untextured buggy messes in the only fully functional build and taking peeks back at their concept art, early kit design, and so on has been a small obsession of mine since the game shut down in 2018. I boot up the test build every now and then and play all these barely functional characters and it’s soooo weird standing on the cutting room floor. I never got into rising thunder but it’s always bittersweet seeing what could’ve been

I remember being so hype for Rising Thunder, especially since I knew who was developing it. When they pulled the plug, I was SO devastated. I played it for a while until I focused more of my time on MKX. And yeah, I NEVER knew about the 2 secret characters. And I'm loving what I see of Aegis. Thank you for this video! I will definitely re-download it and play her. Will I play it a ton? Probably not. Do I hope for a similar character in 2XKO? Hell yeah.

You just love to see Northernlion in the youtuber collage, lol

Now I absolutely love the new content on a variety of different types of games, but I've been watching you since the mention of rev 2 seemed to make you melt instantly and it's nice hearing you ramble about a fighting game like this again. Again love the new stuff, this is just activating some sort of cozy sensor in my brain.

I've been watching your videos for over 3 years at this point, and in that 'short' amount of time you've easily become one of my favorite creators on RU-vid. Your production quality is excellent (and getting better with every release!) but you are _really_ good at telling stories; every time I see you've uploaded a new video I get excited to see what thing you're passionate about I am also about to become passionate about.

5:19 Files are electricity when loaded onto RAM or cache, but when loaded onto a more permanent storage like an HDD or tape, they are represented by magnetic polarity. SSDs are a bit more complicated, but they essentially store the data in electricity, just in a different way than RAM.

hey babe wake up new Leon Massey video just dropped

the "using a move to give yourself an armour buff" does remind me of the big rock guy in killer instinct

One of the best looks at a videogame on the internet. Your visuals are AMAZING and roughly what I want to achieve with my content someday, and what you managed to say alongside the funny, stupid jokes sprinkled throughout helped keep me hooked. I'm so glad I watched this, because you showed you were as passionate as making this as the developers were for making the game during the short time they had their hands on it. Cheers to more great content!

this is one of the only videos about games on youtube i watched from begining to end, you made this video like a murder mystery hahahah love it bro !

The small animations leon made for this video are a nice touch, especially clever when he makes Gun "wink" at 17:08.

This video was awesome. I love cutting roof floor content in games and these two characters actually being playable in a form is really cool, so much stuff doesn't even make it that far. I'd like to give em a shot one day.

Great video. Always a joy to hear you talk about things that interest you, and a fighter to boot. You've really developed your own style, and I eagerly await your next project.

wow the paper mario sequence was so good. rising thunder was such a good game ty for bringing more attention to it. also the matty handcock slander is so welcome

Sick video as always, but I just want to recommend a unique fighting game called Your Only Move Is hustle or YOMI hustle for short which I’ve been loving playing and hasn’t gotten much youtube coverage

As a game dev with some of their best work left on various cutting room floors, this makes me pretty nostalgic. Great video, incredible production value!

Wow this was a masterpiece Leon. I can't believe no one else has covered this before. Absolutely fascinating. I'd love for you to cover more cut content in fighting games!

damn, the script writing, the research, the editing, the animations, it's all approaching god tier content. it's criminal that this man has less than 200k subs, this is some 1.3 mil type work here

This might be the most enthralling video on a fighting game I've ever seen. Thanks for sharing, chances are it's not a story I would have ever known about if you hadn't.

i think we shouldnt forgot about the fact the team is now working on a new fighting game. Project L, the league of legend fighting game. Some mechanics are really similar but its a tag fighter. And this one will probably live.

The way you describe Aegis' playstyle and the way that character works has me really intrigued, like I hard fucks with the concept of that. I'd be down if they adapt that into like Leona or a similar LoL character for Project L

i had no idea rising thunder managed to stay alive as a discord fighter, incredible documentary and discovery

really happy to have you back on some obscure fighting game stuff. your other videoas are great but it has almost been 6 in a row without a 40 min doc about how walking speed is the defining aspect of a fighting game character archetype. (honestly that sound like a good video subject)

I genuinely think this is the most well edited video I’ve ever seen for a fighting game. INCREDIBLE job.

that ending almost made me cry. What a masterpiece of a video, well done mate

Genuinely a video that should be played at a sort of video game museum, excellent work

Your editing gags are stellar! Love this

damn im early.... watching a Leon video while cooking will make my day better.

this is one of your best videos I've seen !! from the framing, to the storytelling, to the jokes, to the information, to the editing. you killllllllllled this one 🔥

Okay, time to back the patreon on payday, I guess. Everything you upload is interesting, even if it isn't a topic I am interested in myself. Thanks for always putting so much heart into the stuff you make.

This is genuinely such a beautiful video. Ending had me sobbing on the way to work.

This... this is a video I think I'll be revisiting more than once. The story of Aegis and Gun is kinda heartwarming, in a way, and I don't even play FGC games.

Fantastic fucking video. The concept of cut content has always interested me, I've always liked to look at what could have been for a film/game/tv series. Usually tho, it's just concept art, a deleted scene, some discarded props, or a few rogue files that can't be properly interacted with. But to find two playable characters in a fighting game!?!? As the video points out, this should have been one of the most monumental discoveries in video game history, yet this is the first I'm hearing of it.

THE ANIMATION AND LIKE THE PAPER MARIO SEGMENT OMG THE AMOUNT OF EFFORT THAT WENT JNTO THSI

my man hitting me with the fear and hunger 2 ost from the beginning of the video, a man of great taste.

Watching the progression of your animation style is inspiring. I loved your old content from years ago, but the more recent stuff that has been implementing more animation has been so cool

bro no joke thought this was going to be about some war stuff then I clicked heard Leon and was like "Oh roight street fighter"

Man your editing is absolutely godlike, you got me hooked from start to finish in thia game I had absolutely no attachment to Amazing stuff

This is my type of video. I’m sure many will praise this one, but how could they not? It’s just good. Thanks for this

16:10 that reference to that on Junji Ito manga is really clever, overall great video!

I remember hearing you on stream talking about how you preferred a more emotional, narrative driven video than a more dry review, and you are completely correct. This was phenomenal to see a deep dive of characters that might've been completely lost to time but were saved by passionate people. It makes me wonder about games like Evolve, Paragon, or Battleborn that all got scrapped before reaching their full potential if they have anything. Kudos

I envy your dedication Leon you're really talented and sensitive, I can tell that just by looking a video about cut content of a dead game your work goes the extra mile

Aegis reminds me a lot of Q from Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, I absolutely love this type of play.

As of late I've been so bored of RU-vid and video content in general. Watching this captivated me genuinely like nothing else. Love the videos so much and I can't wait for the next amazing upload.

Probably the best video that I saw this year

Great video! I never thought much about rising thunder until now, but this game always did look interesting, never was able to play it tho.

21:47 "A mechanic i've never seen replicated" Vaseraga go brrrrrr

Oh wow when I clicked on my *second* ever video from this channel after watching and loving your Fox and MetaKnight video *yesterday* I didn't expect to stumble upon the release of a vido showcasing not just a obscure game, but two of the "least known fighting game characters, ever." This is a weird feeling, existential in nature perhaps? Regardless I'm so happy you've allowed this moment to happen, thank you!

Woah. This video deserves much more views

Babe wake up! New Leon Massive video dropped! I really love your videos, especially the ones fom Fighting games.

4:12 I know its just a joke, but the McDonald's Hot Coffee was absolutely their fault. 3rd Degree burns should not be possible with coffee.

I really wonder how much this video is going to end up boosting Rising Thunder's popularity, especially in the long term

God I love this content. Excuisite. Words fail to truly capture this properly. Videos are slow but ALWAYS worth the wait. I look forward to whatever you talk about next. Back to bingeing your content in the mean time.

You outdid yourself with the quality on this one! Wasnt bored for even a sec for the whole vid

maannn i love how you can breakdown concepts. I not even done with the explanation of special 1 and it's so well done. You do this a lot in your other videos too but only now i've commented on it Plus your evolving visual style is very satisfying too.

ya know i usually just listen to this guys videos but watching this one the visuals are pretty funny and i enjoy them xD

Fantastic production value and writing!

Goddamn, that was a knowledge drop I was not prepared for