Thank you for that information and everything, it's good to have. And great to see someone is taking such pains to catalog these things. What got me thinking about it again is, well, not long ago I suffered some health issues...not COVID related and I wasn't dying or anything, but it made me think about how much info about the days of various fandoms I grew up with are just completely forgotten now, and could go away forever pretty easily. Just like this once common demo which is now impossible to find!
I've got a thing I feel I should share at this point - this is something I saved many years ago and was preserved thanks to an old Photobucket account still working. This is allegedly the cover (or at least
A cover) of Melty Blood Trial Edition, or some version of it.
I didn't see this in your records, nor could I find it anywhere else, so I don't know if maybe it's a rare image. It looks like a scan, but it might've just been a promotional image online, I suppose.
I first found out about this the day it was posted on the Madman's Cafe (dated August 15 2002):
https://web.archive.org/web/20021220..._08-15-02.html
(Comiket 62 was 2002, so I assume that's a typo on the list)
I vaguely remember hearing about 1.2 existing, but I don't recall anything specific about it. I think it probably was just a website patch (especially given the time table between the first and second Trial Edition)
Wasn't expecting the site mentioned there to have it anymore, but they DO have some very early footage of a non-distributed version of Melty Blood, which I think is using UI assets based on or borrowed from Queen of Heart. (The February 2002 links work, but the May ones seem to be broken)
http://multi.nadenade.com/shinichi/mb.html