Hidden Palace Starts Project Deluge Releasing Over 700 PS2 Prototypes and Demos

Hidden Palace is starting a major project to assess and catalog a massive amount of video game material saved by one person.


Published: March 22, 2021 11:38 AM /

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The PlayStation 2, the first console Hidden Palace is focusing on in their newest project.

Hidden Palace, a website dedicated to preserving video game media, has announced a major assessment project. Titled 'Project Deluge,' this project will have Hidden Palace assessing a giant collection of video game history, all saved through the efforts of a single person.

In the official announcement post for this project, Hidden Palace says that this project may be their biggest undertaking so far. The only thing comparable, they say, was in 2008 when they released over a thousand prototypes for Sega consoles. Midway through 2020, Hidden Palace user "Iniche" and Jason Scott (of Internet Archive) contacted the owner of this massive collection. At the time, they only knew of a small portion of what this person had. This person had backed up every part of their collection single-handedly. Shortly into delving into the collection, Inichejose and Jason decided to go to Hidden Palace to form a broader team to work with the material, and the owner was willing to give over the entire collection, no strings attached.

Shadow of the Colossus, one of the games in Hidden Palaces first lot of games from Project Deluge.

Long story short, the team has so far published over "700" unique prototype builds for the PlayStation 2, weighing in at a compressed size of 860 GB. There are already tons of highlights from this first wave, including tech demos, press previews, localization prototypes, and much more. Just to name a few, there are E3 prototypes of Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex and Shadow of the Colossus, pre-Japanese prototypes for God Hand, and Dino Stalker (along with some debugging tools,) and much more. Hidden Floor doesn't have a tentative release date for the next wave due to this being an ongoing project, but we can expect the next lot "real soon."

The news page announcing this project can be found here, and the main page for Project Deluge can be found here. Be sure to also keep an eye on The Cutting Room Floor, which will provide more detailed research on what's in this lot in the coming months.

Correction 8:35 AM 3/24/2021: There was initially some confusion over who exactly contacted the unnamed donor. We have since updated the article to accurately name who contacted the donor and provide a proper explanation into the origins of Project Deluge.

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I am a graduate of Southern New Hampshire University with a major in writing and a minor in gaming. I have a passion for video games and writing. I also… More about Brian