It's been exactly a year since the huge release, today. I thought I'd give you something nice for that occasion:



This is basically Turok Advance, the way it was supposed to be, in 3D, based on the data from the N64 version. It was scrapped in favor of a 2D Turok. These (three) versions are a bit slow, but it's because they're early versions. I'm told they could have made the engine faster if they had more time with this project.

Grab it from the GBA section. Big thanks to breezer.

A nice release today:



Judgement Force for Saturn - what originally was to be Streets of Rage 3D and ended up as Fighting Force on the Playstation.

Forum topic.

You can cycle between stages 11, 12, 13, 14, 21 and 91 by pressing Up and Down on the character select screen.

Huge thanks to the contributors - saturn_worship, Dean Burgess, Brutus, mick_aka, elend, Blackwolf, Juste, linlhutz, Wheelaa, Codeman, evilhamwizard, Ryo Suzuki, FrankiePD, roberam and Ninju. Feel free to donate if you've been waiting for Fighting Force like them :)

There will be more community releases (funded by interested members) in the future. If you would like to be informed of such fundraisers, email me at thedrx@gmail.com, or visit us on irc at #protos on irc.drx.pl

Enjoy!

Idea: raise funds and release Fighting Force for Saturn (an unreleased game).

Interested? For more details (and screenshots) follow this link.

I'm back. Missed me?

Today I've got five Sonic protos:

* Sonic CD - Prototype 806
* Sonic Adventure 1 (E3 Trial)
* Sonic Adventure 1 LE (dumped from a GD-R)
* Sonic Adventure 2 (Mar 18, 2001 prototype)
* Sonic Adventure 2 (Nov 28, 2000 preview prototype)

Grab the torrent here.

Please seed, and visit as at #protos on irc.drx.pl :)

Thanks to Zero-Chan, darc and Puto!

PS. I have limited internet access lately (I have no PC right now, and I'm moving), but when I come back I have some nice stuff to share.

Update: On our forums, FamilyGuy released a GDI to NRG conversion pack for one of the SA2 protos. This should help those having troubles playing it normally.

Today I'm releasing two Fire Emblem 7 prototypes for GBA:



Get them both in the GBA section.

Thanks to Erika, Keitaro and Tanks.

Something for Saturn and Panzer Dragoon fans:



Panzer Dragoon prototypes:

Panzer Dragoon Saga - Sep 16, 1997 prototype - Disc 1 (of only 1?)

Panzer Dragoon Saga - Nov 30, 1997 prototype - Discs 1, 2 and 3

Panzer Dragoon Saga - Dec 22, 1997 prototype - Disc 1

Panzer Dragoon Saga - Dec 30, 1997 prototype - Discs 3 and 4

Panzer Dragoon Zwei - 45% prototype (preview) - Feb 02, 1996

I apologize for the randomness of the protos, but we salvaged all we could.

Grab the torrent here!

Thanks to the folks from The Will of the Ancients, a great Panzer Dragoon site with a really great community. In particular, I'd like to thank Solo Wing Dragon, Dragon Phoenix, Scott, Grumbler, alavaliant, Saturn_Worship, Lance Way, Gehpnaet, Heretic Agnostic,
roushimsx, Shadow, snowgirl_orta and Chizzles.

Enjoy! Don't forget to stop by our IRC channel - irc.drx.pl, #protos

Today, I'm releasing 14 Pico protos, 3 Saturn-related dumps and 3 Megadrive prototypes.

The Pico crap is available here.

The Saturn stuff is: an unreleased Saturn BIOS version, some weird Test Menu and a CD emulator chip, all available here.

The most interesting prototypes, however, are the Megadrive ones:





Early prototypes of Nightmare Circus (a very rare game, ask any collector!), X-perts, and Ecco II.

All of these, except Ecco, were generously donated by Kevtris (thanks man), in the form of EPROM dumps. I had lots of fun matching unlabelled EPROMs together.

But, the most interesting is the Ecco one. It comes from the QA archives released a month ago. The reason for the delay was so that the biggest Ecco fan on the planet, Epicenter, could work on finding all the crazy differences in ROMs.

Indeed, you can find full, thorough documentation of the (many!) differences between this one, and the final version on his website -- Dark Sea. A lot of effort was put into dissecting the prototypes, so make sure you pay a visit! You can jump directly to Ecco 2 X11 documentation here.

Of course, this is not all Ecco goodness that we have up our sleeves -- there's lots of Ecco goodness to be released in the coming weeks. And many non-Ecco protos too, so stay tuned.

Veteran site visitors probably noticed that I somewhat redesigned Hidden Palace. I reactivated the forums (hopefully they will have more activity this time). I also introduced a new feature to the site, as I couldn't have possibly done it all myself: screenshot uploads. If you're bored, and you want to contribute, feel free to upload as many screenshots as you like.

See you next release =)

I present to you, an unreleased Tiburon game:



It was supplied to me by a generous donator, who wished to remain anonymous. Thanks!

PS. I still need to add the recent huge release to the website, and I've got lots more coming, so stay tuned!

Remember when I said I would never beat a certain release? Well I was wrong. Behold, over 1000 prototypes for various Sega consoles.



Quick numbers: 155 Sega 32x prototypes, 300 Game Gear prototypes, 464 Mega Drive prototypes, 94 Pico prototypes, 6 Gamecube prototypes -- 1024 prototype overall (what a nice round number!), making this the biggest prototype release in history (and probably ever to come). Just multiply this by $100 (which is the average price of these things, and many of them are MUCH more valuable) and you'll see how lucky you are to get them free of charge.

There is lots of stuff here -- Sonic, Ristar, Tempo, and many other high-profile, hard-to-find game prototypes which many of us played years back and miss. Many with different features, levels, hidden data.

Two of these games are unreleased, namely Baby Boom (crazy Megadrive game) and David Robinson Basketball for Game Gear. Many of the games have various builds in various stages of completion - from early alphas (there's even a plain engine build of Taz 2 I believe, with no content at all) to late betas and finals. Yes, finals -- I included a number (around 30, I believe) of finals in the release because I've got very accurate build dates for most of the protos, and that is a great thing to know :)

I've worked on getting this lot built and packed for the past seven days -- it was a hefty task. Many of these came in weird formats, many were passworded/encrypted, and it was a lot of manual work.

Most of the protos come from one lot, snagged from Sega of America Q&A archives, from around 1994-1995. It was very hard to get it, and it wasn't cheap either. The disc protos (Gamecube, Dreamcast, Saturn) come from an earlier lot that I saved up until now.

We have an irc channel up for the discussion of these protos. Server is irc.drx.pl, channel is #sonicprotos. Additionally, I feel I have to recommend a few links to forums that will likely dissect these prototypes to little pieces. For Sonic prototypes, I recommend Sonic Retro. For all the non-Sonic protos, hop to X-Cult and Lost Levels.

I'm not gonna lie -- these things cost me an arm and a leg. If you want to help me, you can donate (read this or just e-mail me at thedrx@gmail.com). Also, if you have any information about any prototypes, please don't hesitate to contact me as well =) It will help get more prototypes in the future, and will make you warm that you did a good thing.

This release is not all I have. I will be releasing more over the next hours, days and weeks - Dreamcast Sonic protos, Ecco protos, more Sega CD protos, so stay tuned!

Also, if you ever dreamt of getting a prototype of any kind and you have the funds -- contact me, I have the ability to make things happen, so who knows ;)

There is so much more I wanted to write here, but I didn't manage to do it on time. I didn't have time to do many things I wanted to do - update the site, for one. So many things are outdated.

Let me thank everybody who helped me with this release (sorry if I forgot anyone!) - man_traic (big kudos to this guy), Aurochs, Nemesis, Execbyte, Biggestsonicfan, rika_chou, Puto, Sazpaimon, Tweaker, Mad Echidna, QJimbo, Kat, Dot50Cal, Darcagn, Mustapha, LocalH, Scarred Sun, Jonna Lybrand, Heran Bago, Nineko, Xkeeper, Keiji, Epicenter, Witeoutking, Tweeterman, Irvin Trigueros, Richard Foltz, Sonic AD, Robin Whitehead, Andrew Neilson, Matthew Gundel, Grant Short, GerbilSoft, #sonicprotos, and everybody else!

Special thanks to Kazia, who had to endure me working late on these!

And here are the links. I will try to give HTTP linkage, but for now, have these torrents (they are probably the best way to distribute these, as this server will probably go down as the protos get dugg):

Mega Drive, 32x, Pico, Game Gear, Saturn, Mega CD, Master System
Gamecube

See you next release! :)

James Connolly aka man_traic of Welcome to the rash has supplied a Road Rash 3 alpha cart. Enjoy!

Kudos to QJimbo for dumping it, as well.

I have some new stuff coming for Hidden Palace in the coming months, so stay tuned.