A slice of Dreamcast-era weirdness just crawled out of the VHS void: after 25 years, the long-lost Space Channel 5/MTV crossover has finally resurfaced online, and it’s exactly what you’d hope for. Time Extension tracks how a fan archivist digitized an old tape and accidentally solved a bit of Sega and MTV lost media in the process.
Back in 2000, Sega teamed up with MTV for a promo spot tied to the Video Music Awards, with Ulala appearing as a virtual host to introduce nominees for Best Dance Video. The newly unearthed footage shows her teeing up clips for *NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye,” Britney Spears’ “(You Drive Me) Crazy,” and other peak TRL‑era staples, all rendered in that chunky, hyper-saturated Space Channel 5 style. It’s short and cheesy, and it lands smack in that sweet spot where Sega was desperately trying to make the Dreamcast feel like the coolest object on Earth.
The kicker is how close this came to just disappearing. For years, fans knew about the MTV collaboration thanks to old press blurbs and contemporary coverage, but clean footage never made it to DVD extras, re-releases, or even decent YouTube rips. The version doing the rounds now comes from a VHS archivist who happened to have recorded the VMAs broadcast and only recently realized what they were sitting on. Lost media people have been chasing this thing for decades; one random tape in 2026 finally closes the loop.
Time Extension’s story is a stark reminder of how fragile this preservation stuff really is: a major cable network collab, a first-party platform holder, a recognizable character, and still, the only reason we can actually watch it now is that somebody didn’t tape over their recording with a King of Queens rerun. For Space Channel 5 fans, it’s a rare new scrap of canon. For everyone else, it’s a three-minute portal back to when “Ulala hosting the VMAs” felt like a perfectly reasonable marketing idea.
Source: Time Extension
