Namco's 1982 arcade hit Xevious is one of the most influential shmups of all time. Not only did it do a lot of new things with the genre – such as boss battles and including an actual storyline – it was also a huge commercial success for the company, spawning sequels, ports and related merchandise.
Such is Xevious' high status within Namco's pantheon of games that it was given the CGI movie treatment in 2002 to celebrate its 20th anniversary. Created by Groove Corporation, the 75-minute film was shown during a summer 2002 roadshow in Japan, and while a home media release was planned, it never happened. The movie hasn't been rebroadcast since then.
According to the Lost Media Wiki, the head of Groove Corporation stole the company's cash and its master tapes, "which caused the company to go out of business", hence the lack of a DVD or VHS release.
"Many people have claimed to have filmed the movie during its release, but no clips can be found online and it is believed that cameras were banned during the summer roadshow," adds Lost Media Wiki. "A small 10-minute segment of the film can be found on a Groove Corporation promotional disc, but this segment has not been uploaded to the internet, and the disc typically commands high prices on auction sites."
While the full movie remains lost for the time being, a trailer for the film has now been uploaded to YouTube by RndStranger.
"This is [the] trailer for the Xevious CGI animated movie that was released to Japanese theaters for a very short run in 2002," says the uploader. "After the run was finished, the movie was never released again. Only a clip about five seconds long existed online before this. However, I found a promotional preview CD that included trailers for several animated short films including Xevious. So here is the trailer, ripped from that CD."
Back in 2020, Bandai Namco Studios included a snippet from the movie as part of its Namco Museum of Art series, which would suggest the company has the film in its archives.
Is this some great lost masterpiece? Well, according to this post, reviews at the time were almost all negative, so perhaps not.