StarTopic Project Deluge |ST| plunging through the depths of gaming history

[Krvavi Abadas]

(was debating if the thread should be about Hidden Palace in general, but i think their latest announcement ties into this project nicely.)

The Origin
Historically, the idea of preserving prototypes of games dates back to the early 90s. Albeit unintentionally.

The piracy groups of the time, in a typical war of being the "first" to get a game out there. Would occasionally release earlier builds without realizing it. That Sonic 2 build is probably the most famous example, according to series creator Yuji Naka. It was likely stolen from a toy fair.

Naka: What? You're kidding! Tell me more. I'd really like to get that back. laugh I guess we know what happened to that now... You see, back in mid-1992 we had taken a demonstration cartridge to a toy show in New York. It wound up being stolen, and although we searched and searched all over, it was never found. So that's probably where the data comes from. What's the Hidden Palace in this one like?

The build was then copied onto bootleg cartridges. and was eventually rediscovered online in 1998. Creating the modern preservation scene as we know it. As for the Street Fighter 2 build, that's a different long story. But the short version is that it was dumped in 1994 and people didn't realize it was a legit proto until around 2012.

The actual precursor to mass-releases like Deluge naturally came from the Sonic community, or more specifically. The legendary "Drx".

Drx had somehow managed to acquire a batch of physical CDs that were used by SEGA for backup purposes, and ended up dumping the entire lot on February 23, 2008.
In total, the lot contained 2 Master System prototypes, 300 Game Gear prototypes, 464 Mega Drive prototypes, 94 Pico prototypes, 1 Mega-CD prototype, 155 Sega 32X prototypes, 2 Saturn prototypes, and 6 Nintendo GameCube prototypes. Creating a total of 1024 unique builds.

Drx is still around to this day, and was even involved in this project.

The Lots
All of these discs were reportedly kept in storage thanks to one person, though i think it would be best to keep their identity a secret.

Lot 1: Playstation 2 (755 builds)

A few notable releases

• 22 Different Builds of Alias, providing a decent look into a full-scale development timeline.
• A pitch for an unreleased Alien game developed by Climax Solent.
• At least one development tool, the "Artist Tool Monitor".
• A build of Lego Star Wars containing an unused level, a debug menu, and a hilarious warning for reviewers not to spoil the Episode III content. (The game launched about a month before the movie.)

Lot 2: PlayStation 1, Saturn, and CD-I (470 builds)
A few notable releases

• A build of the infamous "Clayfighter Extreme", which was a cancelled PS1 port of Clayfighter 63 1/3.
• An unreleased PS1 port of the classic Capcom arcade game "Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom", which eventually got a Japan-only Saturn release bundled with it's sequel.
• A "MPEG video sampler" for the CD-i (really)
• A build of Spyro 3 with some rather unusual and goofy placeholder dialogue, and lots of content that doesn't exist in the final game.

Lot 3: Xbox and Dreamcast (484 builds)

A few notable releases

• 2 more (Xbox) builds of Alias, continuing the unique look into it's development history.
• A much larger density in unreleased titles. Including games like He-Man: Defender of Grayskull (Which was cancelled so late into development that it was listed as being backwards compatible on the Xbox 360.) and Hail to the Chimp (Which wouldn't surface until 2008 on 360/PS3.)
• A Konami developed Snocross game which lost it's ESPN license mid-development. Leading the build in question to just use a 3D Konami logo as a "title screen".
• A build of Typing of the Dead with a completely unused network ranking option.
• A build of Toejam & Earl 3 containing the original design for the main villain, which was based off the KKK as part of the game's themes against racism.

Lot 4(?): cart-based systems (178 builds)

(Basically everything is represented, even the Turbografx.)
A few notable releases

• A new, more polished, build of the infamously unreleased "Bio Force Ape".
• 24 other completely unreleased games alongside it, such as a Game Boy Test Cartridge and a GBA game based off Robocop.
• A SNES build of Ballz 3D that lacks the sexual moans in it's title theme, and also crashes during the intro if you don't press start fast enough.
• A Rampart NES build containing..... stuff.

---

There's a lot more stuff included in these lots than what i mentioned in the OP. But i just wanted to get a basic introduction on here in preparation for the 4th lot.

 

[Krvavi Abadas]

Here we go. Not officially part of Project Deluge, but it's a similar concept.
Since it's just released. People are still actively looking through it. So apologies if the listing in the OP is a bit underwhelming.

 

[Krvavi Abadas]

i guess this is a general hidden palace thread now.




the other tape is a set of animation tests for what would later be known as "Ristar". it was previously shown as an intermission during one of HP's streams, but this version is slightly higher quality.

Segapede, of course. is the big one here. it also was previously shown in the form of a VHS recording, but this is the actual ROM file.
if the visuals look familar, that's because it actually reuses assets from the infamously removed "Hidden Palace Zone" level in Sonic 2.
the background music (composed by Howard Drossin) would later go on to be used as one of the various menu themes for the SEGA Channel service, though there's also two extra unused tracks hidden in the data that i don't think were reused.

BONUS


from SEGA Dreamcast Info, who helped work on lot 3 of deluge. here's the full source code for Spirit of Speed 1937. the last game released under the notorious "LJN" brand.

 

[Krvavi Abadas]

Now this is a bit closer to the original intent of the thread.
Edward Semrad was an early gaming journalist who started at the Milwaukee Journal before more famously having a tenure at the classic mag Electronic Gaming Monthly.
Being that he started so early on, at the hayday of the Atari 2600. The collection goes from there up to the early 90s, and spans a wide range of platforms.
The NES and Colecovision builds are being handled by Hidden Palace, While SMSpower and AtariProtos (Scroll down, it seems his part of the lot was posted back in May.) have handled the Master System and the various Atari platforms respectively.

The photo up above is the biggest find of the lot, an unreleased US localization of the game "Doki! Doki! Yuuenchi: Crazy Land Daisakusen", it eventually got a PAL release under the name "The Trolls in Crazyland", but this has several noticeable changes compared to that.

 

[Krvavi Abadas]

they're back.
some notable highlights this time around...

• a completely unreleased "Space Station Tycoon" game for Wii, developed by Wahoo Studios. it notably appears to be a spritual successor to their previous simulator Outpost Kaloki, which was developed under their "main" brand Ninjabee.
• some extremely early prototypes for Hellboy: The Science of Evil, no word on if Lobster Johnson is in them at this point of development.
• various Wiiware games printed on RVT-R disks, likely not meant to suggest they were meant to be full retail releases. but it's still highly unusual. one of them (Pit Crew Panic!) also boots into a full debug menu.
• a build of Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 with some unusual test videos, showing off the Ubisoft office the game was developed at.
• a build of LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga that includes the entire first level of LEGO Indiana Jones as a bonus, rather than the basic trailer used in the final game.
  
  
  there's also quite a few test maps left over in the files as well, though that seems to require some fileswapping to function.