The Big Comfy Couch (lost build of cancelled Xbox game based on Canadian children's TV series; 2004)

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Tang6.JPG

Screenshot of the game's title screen assets.

Status: Lost

The Big Comfy Couch is a Canadian children's TV series that originally ran on YTV from 1992-1996 with 2 additional seasons that aired on Treehouse TV in 2002 and 2006 respectively. The show revolves around a clown girl named Loonette and her mute living doll named Molly who often solve problems throughout the show from their titular big comfy couch. In each episode, Loonette reads Molly a story and performs an exercise called the "Clock Rug Stretch" and, at the end, one of them makes a big mess around the couch which would require them to clean it up in 10 seconds throughout the "Ten Second Tidy".

Xbox Game

In 2011, an article was made on Unseen64 about a cancelled game of the series developed in 2004 for the Xbox. Before then, information on this game was very scarce with no screenshots or any mentioning of the game known to exist on the Internet.[1][2] The article had 3 screenshots from the game. The first screenshot showed that the game was going to be a 3D platformer with a few meter-like bars on the screen, the second was the title screen that showed it was intended to eventually have Xbox Live support, and the third featured Loonette being beaten by a group of giant dust bunnies while being covered in "blood." It is unknown how far into development the game was before getting cancelled.

In 2018, LMW user "canadianchildhood" posted a thread on the Lost Media Wiki forums about the game which many users replied to. Some users speculated it to be a hoax.[3] A few days later, YouTuber and LMW collaborator LSuperSonicQ decided to email Unseen64 to question them on the screenshots in the article, later getting a reply confirming the screenshots were real and that they were sent from one of the developers who also released screenshots for another unreleased game called Power Rangers Legacy that ran on the same game engine as The Big Comfy Couch.

Search Effort

Months later, "canadianchildhood" mentioned that THQ published various Power Rangers games in the early 2000s, with 2 other users "dogpolygonrt66" and "ecofox" then posting the credit names featured in most of the Power Rangers games released around that time that could've also worked on Power Rangers Legacy. LSuperSonicQ then tried to contact them to no avail and realized that Disney owned the rights to the franchise at that time.

The search was eventually moved to the Lost Media Wiki Discord as the third On the Hunt channel as more users were able to help search for more information on it. LSSQ then emailed Unseen64 again to ask for any more details. They mentioned the name of a former Capcom employee Chris Tang who worked on both games. Around that time, Tang worked for a company called Genazea with another developer named Eric Suzuki (who was married to Alyson Court, the actress who played Loonette in the show.) Alyson then replied that the game existed but couldn't remember the developer's name.[4]

Findings

At some point, Chris Tang joined the LMW Discord server and confirmed the game was real, posting some screenshots and a couple of mock-ups of the game. Tang also stated that the "blood" from the dust bunny screenshot was "grape juice". In Chris' words:

"I'm the owner of the only physical hardware the game ever ran on. But I do not have access to it and I'm not sure if I will. But if I do I plan to make videos or something."

He also showed screenshots for another cancelled game he worked on called Capcom Generations that ran on the same game engine.

In December 2022, Chris got the hardware to work and uploaded the gameplay footage running on it. He has stated he will upload more footage at some point.

Gallery

On the Hunt

Screenshots

Footage

Gameplay footage uploaded by Chris Tang.

Videos

LSuperSonicQ's video on the subject.

LSuperSonicQ's follow-up video on the subject.

References