Nearly 500 “new” Xbox, Dreamcast prototypes just released

Deluge Project, a video game archive project by The Hidden Palace, may be the biggest game preservation effort ever. Since March, this dedicated group of video game archivists has released several hundred never-before-seen prototypes for classic systems, and now it’s the turn of the Dreamcast and Xbox.

Deluge Project publicly launched in March 2021 as an archive project dedicated to documenting and downloading never-before-seen game ROMs from the massive catalog of an extremely dedicated collector. This includes prototypes, first press copies, mid-localization releases, and perhaps the most exciting new games.

Read more: Game Preservation Group Releases Over 700 New PS2 Prototypes And Demos

Each one is dumped by the (apparently very nice) owner, checked for differences from the final version, and then finally tested by the ad.dedicated team of archivists. The unique characteristics of each version are then cataloged and a disk image is uploaded to the archive.

The project’s debut in March saw the release of over 700 pre-release Curios for the PlayStation 2. Some Saturn, PlayStation and CD-i protos followed in April, and just a few days ago, September 18. , the team completed the gargantuan task of documenting nearly 500 Dreamcast and Xbox prototypes, which are now accessible to everyone.

Each of 135 Dreamcast prototypes included in this lot had to be emptied by hand using retail equipment. Dreamcast GD-ROM discs can only be read by Dreamcasts because Sega used a proprietary 1 GB disk format which he called “GD-ROM”. To actually extract the data from these prototypes, which were then uploaded and digitized by the archiving team, the dumper had to use a vintage boot disk made by Sega called System Disc 2. This allows a commercial Dreamcast to play. the pre-version GD-ROM versions, at which point the dumper can extract them from the serial port of the console using an SD card reader. This process is then repeated for each disk.

Notable games in the Dreamcast dump include prototypes of Bad bleeding and Professional skater Tony Hawk, both of which have debugging modes, and a version of Now GT with Luigi in it. One important thing to note about this Professional skater build is that the code to remove the hud from the game in debug mode is “SLUT” which is a bit messed up but I personally find it funny. As an aside to make you feel old, here is a short list of interesting builds made before I was born:

• Soul Calibur (October 4, 1999)
• Crazy Taxi (December 3, 1999)
• Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (December 13, 1999)
• Tony Hawk’s professional skater (February 11, 2000)
• Time Stalkers (February 25, 2000)

The Xbox ROM version of the project is much larger and includes 349 games, none of which has been done before me. Xbox discs are less proprietary than Dreamcast discs, but also less consistent, according to archivists, presenting a whole different set of retention issues. Xbox games are typically printed on double-layer DVDs with separate DVD-Video and Xbox game scores, but some prototypes are also on CD-ROM. This makes them boring to dump, and even harder to check for construction differences as you have to determine if you’re looking at two different versions, or the same version on two different disc styles.

Despite these difficulties, a ton of unique and interesting prototypes ended up being included in this bundle. There is the oldest known Psychonauts construction preview, a Jet Set Radio Future prototype, and a construction of Shrek video game that barely precedes the final retail version. There are hundreds of unique games in this bundle, some of which have never been released. The Vatz stands out as an incredibly early demo of a canceled game, which includes concept notes to explain goals and ideas to potential investors or the press.

These are just a few examples of the really cool crap included in this most recent version of Project Deluge. At this point, they’ve evaluated over 4,000 records (some turned out to be duplicates or the same as retail versions), and have apparently only scratched the surface of the entire collection. Expect more wild discoveries as the project continues to explore, document, and release its huge stash of lost relics.