Last night, the developers at Volition did something remarkable. They revealed a cancelled game in their biggest series, Saints Row, and then they set it free, releasing it to the public for anyone to download.
The game, Saints Row Undercover, was originally slated for the PSP before Volition decided to cancel it. At first it was designed as a port of Saints Row 2, but it later turned into a standalone game, the studio said. Although they’d eventually axe the game because the prototype didn’t meet their expectations, they recently rediscovered it and decided to release it to the wild, which is ridiculously cool.
You can download the ISO of Saints Row Undercover over at Unseen64, a website that archives and reports on cancelled video games. You’ll need a PSP emulator or modded PSP to make it work, and given that this is just a prototype, it’s likely full of bugs and glitches. Still—it’s video game history!
It’d be pretty rad to see other developers follow Volition’s example and put out some of their own unreleased prototypes. I wonder how many fascinating hidden treasures are sitting on studio shelves throughout the world, never to be seen because of NDAs and other legal restrictions.
You can reach the author of this post at jason@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @jasonschreier.