Posted Thu Jan 28, 2016 at 05:40 PM PST by Justin Clark
Now, it belongs to the ages (and Unseen 64).
Volition just wrapped up their livestream of the game that would be 'Saints Row Undercover', which you can watch here if you just want to flitter around and have a look. And it's most certainly worth a look. From an archaeological perspective, it's a compelling watch, especially considering, even as rough a state as its in, some serious work had gone into this thing before the plug was pulled.
You *could* watch it. Alternately, you can just go download and play it yourself. Like, right now.
In what's probably the coolest move by a developer in a really long time, right as the livestream was wrapping up, Volition uploaded the ISO file for the abandoned build of the game to Unseen 64. If you've never visited, the place is an utter treasure trove of information on cancelled and unfinished video games, and needs to be in your bookmarks. And now, it's the permanent home of all the hard work that went into this unreleased 'Saints Row' title.
There's of course, a couple of caveats. Naturally, the game's not finished, so it's buggy and glitchy as hell, and there's not a single thing Volition will be doing in terms of further support. It also requires a PSP emulator. Sadly, it's looking like actual PSPs modded to read ISOs won't play the thing either, though that doesn't seem to be an intentional screwjob so much as the side effect of this game only seeing the light of day via an official Sony dev kit. that said, Unseen is kind enough to link to one of the better PSP emus out there, PPSSPP, right alongside the ISOs.
Still, even with those minor hassles.this is a developer actively participating in preserving the history of their own games. In a righteous world, this would be setting a wonderful precedent. In the meantime, you should also have a quick look at this YouTube vid which pulls together all the known info as to what 'Undercover' would have been had it been finished.
Source: Volition/Unseen64, Twitch
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