The missing Timesplitters 4 prototype was discovered around 2008 in a PS3 development kit

Zoom in / This image from a 2007 teaser was one of the only remaining parts of the Time dividers 4 Available to the public until this month.

Longtime readers and first-person shooter fans may remember how excited we were to announce this Time dividers 4 in late 2008. Unfortunately, the interesting trailer was the last we saw of the game before the project was halted amid Free Radical's bankruptcy later that year.

However, today we have the opportunity to see and play what we missed over 15 years ago. This is thanks to a quick-sighted eBay trawler who nabbed an old PlayStation 3 development kit that happened to contain a prototype of Time dividers 4 It sits on his hard drive.

Reddit user Flimsy-Zebra3775 I posted about the discovery earlier this month, asking the PS3 subreddit community to provide guidance on what looks like a working prototype of the long-lost game. After what was said The seller asked “a lot of probing questions.” And making sure That prototype It can be bootedflemense-zebra He reportedly paid 525 pounds (about $670) for the development kit, saying, “For the history and my collection, it's worth it.”

Once the development kit was in hand, Flimsy-Zebra shared the prototype files With the Timesplitters subreddit And The hidden palace, a site dedicated to archiving these types of prototypes for future generations. Although the incomplete version does not run on the PS3 emulator RPCS3, fans have done so uploading has been done Few Videos Of the game that runs on actual PS3 hardware, featuring battles with computer-controlled robots outside a gothic castle (and some incredibly exciting music, to boot).

Founder of free radicalism (note Golden eye/Perfect darkness Developer) David Duke He confirmed the authenticity of the footage on social mediarecalling that “this is exactly the kind of nonsense that [insert any publisher name] “I wasn't interested in going back to 2008. You're welcome.”

After Free Radical closed for good in 2014, the studio of the same name closed It was reconstituted under the publishing conglomerate Embracer In 2021 to try to create a version again Time dividers 4 fact. Ironically, that is Time dividers 4 It was the project also It closed amid mass layoffs at Embracer Late last year. Who knows, maybe in 2040 there will be a completely different prototype Time dividers 4 It will appear on some random dev kit, ready to be archived.