Preservation Effort Unearths Over 750 PlayStation 2 Game Prototypes (engadget.com) 24
As VGC notes, the preservation group Hidden Palace has obtained 752 PS2 game prototypes and demos from collectors, shuttered developers and defunct media outlets as part of a Project Deluge initiative. Engadget reports: The mix includes prototypes of classics like God of War II, Katamari Damacy, Okami and the Ratchet & Clank series. There are also E3 demos, including big titles like Shadow of the Colossus, as well as very rough alpha previews for titles like Def Jam: Fight for New York and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3. It's not a complete look at the PS2's history, but it could easily make you nostalgic. Hidden Palace stressed it checked for differences from retail versions, and that most of these prototypes will run in emulators.
There's no tentative release date. Another batch is coming "real soon," though. If nothing else, this is already useful as a snapshot of gaming culture in the early 2000s. You can see breakthrough games before they were finished, or remember just how many extreme sports games were on store shelves.
There's no tentative release date. Another batch is coming "real soon," though. If nothing else, this is already useful as a snapshot of gaming culture in the early 2000s. You can see breakthrough games before they were finished, or remember just how many extreme sports games were on store shelves.
Not like it matters going forward... (Score:4, Informative)
... Sony, Microsoft and the rest are in a full blown war against game ownership and have already have a consortium bent on locking down our pc's once they figured out the average gamer was an illiterate moron 23 or so years ago with ultima online, everquest.
That gave birth to steam in 2004, and uplay/origin in the 2010's.
Going forward most games post 1997 on the PC (aka mmo's, or simply stolen backended rpg's as I refer to them) gave birth the backending PC game apocalypse that's been going on for 2+ decades now, so it will be increasingly impossible to preserve gaming history since the average gamer is full retard about computers and is buying and spending money in client-server backended games on a mass basis.
Microsoft, Valve and the industry got what they wanted with damn near every new AAA game requiring an account of some sort. No thanks to the people who bought back ended games thereby changing the history of gaming and allowing companies to steal whatever isn't nailed down because they are that buying any client-server piece of software is literally stealing the software from yourself idiotically. Getting an incomplete set of files and allowing the company to control the game, a giant wtf.
We wouldn't need to emulate the backends of Earth and Beyond (2002)
Earth and beyond emulator [net-7.org]
If the public wasn't so stupid to see they were just pulling the networking code out of the game and locking the game to a remote computer in order to steal it. We lost dedicated servers and level editors because of those morons as every game was stolen under the mmo moniker beginning with the success of Ultima online in 1997, Raph and Garriot fuckers, changed the entire direction of PC game history.
Quake engine level editor;
Quake engine level editor [icculus.org]
20 year ago, maps, skins were free
Quake 3 models, maps, skins [q3df.org]
Ultima 9 - the game with signleplayer +multiplayer we owned, local win 32 binary, was cancelled for UO service scam game. Then every RPG in development was rebadged mmo.
See here Ultima online devs:
Ultima Online devs discuss how EA cancelled box product ultima for UO, the beginning of DRM, back ended AAA PC games [youtu.be]
Need for speed world "MMO" who's backend was reverse engineered to get it functioning [soapboxrace.world]
God our species is so stupid and computer illiterate, those games should have had dedicated servers, level editors, and we should have owned and controlled them just 'regular' win32 apps hosting like every PC game in the 90's had until UO. Instead of this dystopian hellscape of Steam/uplay/battle.net drm/rockstar social club/malware.
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I get that UO was a 'game changer' so to speak. I understand that the publisher has some ill intent behind it. However I also remember it being really really fun for a while. The social aspect of it was compelling.
I truly enjoyed UO. Like all games I eventually moved on, and unlike others you can't go back for a revisit easily - which is somewhat sad but probably worth the trade off, in UOs particular case. Other titles like NFS and SimCity for crying out loud were clearly just attempts at control for cont
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I am not sure UO really deserves so much hate.
You're exactly the person I'm talking about. Two or more computers networked together become and behave as a single device, that means ANY program can be split into two executables and run client-server between the machines. That means the entire telecom infrastructure allows every software on the planet to hack your machine and take over your PC and deny you getting complete software apps, aka they can steal software on industrial scales. Under american copyright law, that means companies can legally s
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EVERY RPG in development after Ultima online was rebranded mmo
Patently false!
I can think Arcanum right off that top of my head.
They purposely came up with a mythology and programmed the networking in weird ways to have a cover to deny ownership
Please especially in terms of reasonable constraints for 1997 enlighten us about how you could possibly have effected something the scale of UO in 1997 in peer to peer model. Having worked in software (but not games) for a long time I think you are being more than a bit imaginative there.
There is simply SOOOO much state in something like UO. The PCs of the era were anemic compared today, and probably most of the players were on 56kbps links
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Patently false! I can think Arcanum right off that top of my head.
Sigh it isn't because STEAM exists and so does uplay, you don't get those things didn't exist before the MMO apocalypse that taught the game industry gamers were stupid.
You clearly don't grasp the agenda, the fact that STEAM and uplay exist, means THAT WAS the agenda and they've won! The fact that STEAM even exists was a direct response to UO in 97 and Everquest in 99, then we got hit with steam in 2004 with Half-life 2. We should be living in a PC gaming era with no logins or usernames for any PC game bu
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Quake 2 - hasn't got nearly the state considerations an MMO has. There is no need for any clients to know much about what is happening outside the area surrounding their current view ports. If a client disconnects and information is lost it does not matter, you just respawn whatever was supposed to be in those locations when the next client enters.
Now lets also consider the scale "effectively no limit, I fully expect to see 150 people in one gigantic map.." So yes 150 is effectively no limit in the context
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Like I said I don't REALLY disagree with you on the fundamental premise the MMO model has been used abusively as a pretext to lockup games and impose a continuing revenue model
You don't grasp in an internet enabled world of mass computer illiteracy EVERY single piece of software can be made client server and "MMO'ified" 99% of the time though they are just using it as an excuse to get rid of game ownership and kill piracy. You don't grasp in 99% of cases most mmo's are just the same game we would have had as a local win32 with multiplayer and singleplayer the bog standard PC game like quake 2 in the 90s. Nowhere is this more clear then guild wars 1. The "MMO" you pay only once
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Stop telling me what I do and don't grasp. (And for the record yes I grasp your are troll) I don't run Windows 10 because I won't put up with that telemtry crap and the total lack of control I'd have over my own PC. I don't run malware like Ubuntu for that same reason.
Slackware - never dials home.
I also fully grasp that yes you can unnecessarily split out a software component make it a network resource and pretty much lock users out of any real ownership. Yes that bullshit, and it cost Microsoft the oppor
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And yet I don't live in bizzare fantasy realm that you seem to occupy
Yes the bizarre fantasy world of shut down games, which was not possible before Ultima online and people like you buying back ended software. The whole idea of software being shut down is an asburdity. So the "benefits of the network" you so speak of, is the ability of publishers and software companies to break client-server software remotely and take our software away from us, because now they own and control your PC because you were not given a complete local application. This is the price of giving up
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Have you ever stopped and considered, in your defective autistic little mind
It's not defective to not want Microsoft encrypting our files or trying to create artificial software scarcity. You don't grasp the entire software industry is trying to create an artifical monopoly over all software and games. That means prices for everything will go up if they get their way with killing local exe's which is starting in windows 10 with UWP, which changes how windows exe's work and further integrating it with Intel and AMD's move to protect the private profits of big media companies. The
PS2 Graphics (Score:2)
Its an interesting reminder of just how advanced PS2 graphics were for the day when you'd need a very high end PC to achieve the same result - not like now when a PS5 and XBox WhateverItsCalled graphics are really nothing special compared to PC graphics cards.
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I'm not an expert but in the 2d era consoles seemed to have an advantage in graphics because they had specialized hardware to deal with sprites and scrolling. IBM PCs didn't have such a thing so graphics weren't as smoot
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Consoles like the SNES and its contemporaries had dedicated (albeit early) GPUs capable of various graphical tricks suited towards games of the time, a typical PC of the day had just a dumb framebuffer where everything needed to be done by brute force on the cpu and written into the framebuffer. If you compare games from that era which were cross platform, the PC version tends to require a significantly faster cpu, and still have vastly worse graphics and sound compared to console or amiga versions etc.
It w
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Consoles like the SNES and its contemporaries had dedicated (albeit early) GPUs [...] It wasn't until later when cards like the voodoo series came out that GPUs were really introduced to PCs.
As you have written it, this is completely false. Even back in the Win 3.1 days there were VGA graphics cards with 2d acceleration for scaling and rotation, which was all the SNES could do. And the SNES only supported 256x224 resolution. Even CGA cards would do more dots, and the least of VGA cards would do many more pixels at a useful resolution. And a PC with a VGA card was probably a 386, and was fast enough to do Mode 7-like graphics using CPU, although some 286s had VGA and were not fast enough to pull
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It wasn't until later when cards like the voodoo series came out that GPUs were really introduced to PCs.
As you have written it, this is completely false. Even back in the Win 3.1 days there were VGA graphics cards with 2d acceleration for scaling and rotation, which was all the SNES could do.
Super NES launched in Japan on November 21, 1990, under the name Super Famicom. Windows 3.1 launched on April 6, 1992, which is indeed later.
And the SNES only supported 256x224 resolution.
Super NES supports up to 480i (512x448), though only a handful of games used more than 256x224, and virtually none* for anything other than transparency effects or menus.
Even CGA cards would do more dots
In strict black and white mode, which isn't good for much more than text, charts, and graphs. CGA games with color graphics use 160x100 in sixteen colors (such as Tunneler) or 320x200 in four colors.
the least of VGA cards would do many more pixels at a useful resolution. And a PC with a VGA card was probably a 386, and was fast enough to do Mode 7-like graphics using CPU
Yo
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There were some cards with 2d acceleration, but most dos games did not use them because each card implemented it in a different way. They used the generic VGA framebuffer because that was standardised at the register level. Abstraction through driver layers came with windows, and allowed otherwise incompatible hardware to provide a consistent interface for software to use, but added a significant overhead of its own.
In contrast there was only one SNES (or amiga etc), and you could program the chipset direct
The PS2 was pretty quickly overtaken (Score:2)
To match what a PS4 (let alone a 5) can do even without current graphics card prices you're spending $600-$700 if you're not buying used ($100 for case & power supply, $150 for GPU, $250 for board/CPU, $50 ram and $50 hard drive, $50 for a keyboard/mouse, this assumes you buy a dodgy Win10 key).
The PS5 hardware is much, much more powerful than the 4. You'd probably need
Re:How did the Internet get this awful? (Score:5, Informative)
You're rapidly heading towards being the worst thing on the internet. No one gives a fuck, fella.
Don't feed the trolls (Score:2)
Down mod and move on.
Really cool (Score:2)
I find it fascinating when someone find a previously unknown game from a long time ago (say from a SNES or NES). Some have been found 30 years later or more.