Xeco jxak!
The last two years, and this one in particular, seem to be a bacchanalia of unreleased prototypes coming to light. Notably, the XBLA remaster of 007 Goldeneye came to light. And now, Rare’s N64 prototype of Dinosaur Planet, which was reworked into their final game as a second party dev for Nintendo, Star Fox Adventures, has been leaked online.
Courtesy of the preservation group Forest of Illusion, the build has been uploaded to the internet. The ROM was found thanks to being purchased from the collection of a private Swedish game collector.
As they state, the game’s not without bugs. And, more importantly, it’s not going to be 100% on any of the available emulators for the system (at least partially due to the peculiarities of emulating the N64). The files, according to Forest of Illusion, seem to be timestamped to December 1, 2000, meaning that this was a late build of the game, possibly the last before development switched to Star Fox Adventures for the Gamecube.
As the group has stated, the game’s a bit buggy, and while no emulator will run it 100%effectively, it’ll still require some hacking to get it running perfectly beginning to end, even on actual hardware. It was, after all, not completely finished. That said, this information hasn’t stopped people from downloading the ROM and trying to run it.
Still, if 2021 started with a bang for some of gaming’s holy grails, one wonders what the next 10 months have in store for those of us in the retro crowd. That said, the original Dinosaur Planet is a pretty big deal, and it may be hard to top.
Source: Kotaku
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