Over 700 PS2 game prototypes and demos released. The Hidden Palace, a group dedicated to preserving video game development materials to collect and share them, has released more than 700 early builds, prototypes, E3 demos, and press materials from PS2 games. This is one of the largest preservation exercises in the history of the video game industry and is officially known as Project Deluge.
Over 700 PS2 game prototypes and demos released
During a live stream via Twitch that has lasted over 6 hours, The Hidden Palace has shown some of the released material. We have demos from E3 including Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, Shadow of the Colossus, God of War 2, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, and Viewtiful Joe 2, prototypes such as God Hand and debug versions of Final Fantasy X-2, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2, Def Jam: Fight for NY, Burnout 3 and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3.
Preview versions of Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly, Ratchet & Clank (2002), Crazy Taxi, and Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc have also been shown. This is not final or commercial material (hence part of its importance), so there may be errors and differences in the retail games.
The Hidden Palace explains that the prototypes, demos and builds, coming from press and developers, are unpublished and were destined to be sold or lost, but a single (and anonymous) person dedicated himself to rescue all the material, archive it and make a backup copy. A team from The Hidden Palace and Internet Archive then spent nearly a year cataloging the discs, checking the software for differences from the retail version, and then uploading the more than 850GB of data from the 752 games.
Project Deluge is an open initiative, as The Hidden Palace still has more material to catalog and share. The work behind this project is not little. Beyond the work of finding and compiling all this material, it must be cataloged (each title has its file with screenshots and information), dumped using PowerISO and CloneCD, and uploaded to the Internet. The software can be run on a PC using an emulator and should also work on a vulnerable PS2.
