Zap! The Magical Computer (found 3D animated educational film; 1997)

Screengrab of Zap and Teacher from the film.

Status: Found

Date found: 27 Jun 2023

Zap! The Magical Computer is a 3D animated children's educational film created by Anthony Amato and John T. Quinn III and published by Tōnz Entertainment in circa 1997. In it, Zap; a magical talking computer from Planet Xena that gains powers when he learns, and his mentor and fellow-machine Teacher, go off on a quest to find who stole all the number eights on Earth. The film released direct to VHS but judging by the several in-film references to TV executives potentially picking up the characters, the film likely originally served as a pilot pitch for a television series.

Availability

From May 16th to May 18th, 2011; Anthony Amato uploaded edited clips of the film to his YouTube channel sandiegomusician. All clips were edited to have a new super-imposed text introduction, briefly explaining the origins of the film or Amato's thoughts on the clip. On October 9th, 2020, YouTuber Grayfruit, on his Twitch-stream VODs YouTube channel fruit salad; released a video of the available Zap! The Magical Computer clips edited together into one continuous video with the text introductions removed, as a facsimile of the original film. According to the description on Grayfruit's video, there are several partial frames visible in his edit that appear to be from unavailable, missing clips.

This video currently represents the most complete example of the film available on the internet before June 2023, compromising approximately 24 minutes of the film's original 30-minute run time.^[1] There is very little information on Zap! The Magical Computer otherwise available on the Internet. The 6 missing minutes remained lost.

On June 27th, 2023, Internet Archive and LMW Discord user, rimickulous ,obtained a VHS copy of the film and transferred it to DVD, it then was digitized and was subsequently uploaded to both the Internet Archive and YouTube, available to be watched in full.