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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 ธ.ค. 2024
- Released as part of 「PROJECT VELOCITY」, I am proud to present a newly preserved "Early Code" prototype of Hot Wheels: Velocity X for PS2! This build is dated 16th July 2002, pretty much exactly 2 ½ months before the final builds, and features a smorgasbord of changed and removed content!
There's frankly too much going on in this build to list every single difference in the description, so the download on archive.org also includes a PDF document I whipped up listing over 250 differences to the final game that I spotted during my research (and i'm sure there's quite a bit that I missed on top of those). Brief summaries of the most notable differences however are as follows:
*This build contains 3 fully playable vehicles which were scrapped between this build and the final game; Fandango, Jester and Sweet 16 II (the latter has been seen as a model render on a dev website but this is the first time it's been seen in action).
*Burnout Glacier in Joyride mode uses a particularly early iteration of it's map with some very notable differences. The dummied out section of the city area partially viewable in the final builds is fully playable here (it's already been blocked off with the final collision data in other modes), some areas of the map have geometry changes such as a bridge jump near the castle or the two raised one way roads being flat and two way in this build, and a few sections of the map are still in an incredibly early untextured state.
*Monument City in Adventure Mode is also an earlier model than elsewhere in the prototype, with a plethora of texture and model differences including the early Nitro hideout previously seen in a multiplayer map in the final build.
*Pretty much all of the UI outside of the in game HUD is completely different to the final game.
*Several vehicles have differences to their textures, many of them in the prototype are actually more accurate to the IRL models (Such as Vulture, Super Tuned and At-A-Tude) and were changed to be less accurate in the final builds for some reason.
*The main menu features a new, previously unheard music track.
*The Adventure Mode intro FMV is extremely unfinished, most of it is in a rough textureless mockup stage.
*All of the Adventure Missions and Challenges have differences to the final game, some of them major such as Challenge 5 having a different Gear pickup layout in the second half, or Mission 5 having completely different third and fourth objectives.
*Some of the Drag Races are either incomplete or buggy and tend to end themselves early via various errors.
*This build has an X Y Z location UI element present at all times during gameplay, and a Debug "Unlock All" option within the options menu to access all the content in the build.
There are so many more differences than what I summarised above, so please give my documentation (or the proto itself) a look!
Download link: archive.org/de...
This was one of the first games I played on the PS2, and today, I still play it
the biggest discovery in this game's history
I was particularly excited about releasing this build as I knew it had a cult following :)
Fandango, Jester, and Sweet 16 II in the prototype? That's the greatest discovery I've ever seen.
T-pose Max isn't real, he can't hurt you
T-pose Max :
That's a good pre-release build of Hot Wheels Velocity X! After 21 years, the 3 unused cars are in the roster. Sweet 16 II, Fandango and Jester!
This left me speechless NGL, never thought I'd see the day where I would be able to witness rare cars in Velocity X. It was one of my favorite games back in the PS2 era, 8 year old me would be tripping if he saw this for sure.
It's a damn shame that they couldn't do much more with this game because it's obvious that it was going to be super ambitious, probably having an absurd amount of cars, arenas and weapons, and more game modes. But hey this discovery is still appreciated! 💪🏻
I've loved this game as a kid and still do to this day, this is exciting to see! Crazy how much changes from this version to the final product.
Thank you so much! This is incredible!
We can't thank you enough for this. This is such a huge day for the community and more than we could have ever asked for!!
It ended up being more than I expected to get from this build too honestly, especially after the Firebugs build I managed to obtain was the complete opposite (near 2 months pre final yet the game is already about 97% complete) and that kinda lowered my expectations... only for me to get sucker punched by this build lol
The response to this build already has been awesome to see and genuinely heartwarming, I always wanted to finally get off my ass and contribute to the prototype and preservation scene I've followed for a decade or so now, and to be able to do so with a pretty major discovery for a cult game with a dedicated fanbase really made my hours and hours of research worth it!
You know, around november i replayed this game with friends on Discord and i went sad how Burnout Glacier had 2 sections cut out, then the cars in the dev portfolio n stuff
Wishing for one beta to be released
AND ITS HERE
I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS
PROJECTING AND MANIFESTING DOES WORK
Oh damn! This was one of my favorite games ever, this is GREAT.
This makes me want to find even more of the game's sound sources...
this is absolutely insane to me i played hot wheels velo X ever since i was 7 years old and i played for hours a day with my siblings and by myself ive done about everything there is to do in the game so to randomly stumble across this youtube video is amazing to me thank you
didn’t even know this build existed until now, thanks for preserving it! its crazy to see a childhood game of mine, especially one so obscure have a prototype release like this, it kinda looks like an entirely different game from the final product, there’s some aspects i like more than the original, like the menu and the inclusion of the 3 extra cars not seen in the final version. it really does make me wish this game could have been something more.
Love the Andrew WK music
Just as an amendment, the first Andrew WK song at 4:00 is "Party Hard" and at 4:25 it plays "She is Beautiful"
Amazing find after 22 years! Glad you also used the cut cars here! I wish they made it in the final version. I'd imagine Sweet 16 II would've sounded like Greased Lightnin' in the final version instead lol. Jester would probably sound like Way 2 Fast instead of that odd engine sound here. Fandango I'm not that familar with.
I am so amazed by how different this build is compared to the final version. I know Sweet 16 II was one of the known cut cars, but Fandango and Jester are really interesting!
Jester in particular just kind of appeared out of nowhere yeah haha, Fandango at least had the cameo on the billboards in the final game but Jester was completely out of left field.
I'm curious why Sweet 16 II, Jester and Fandango got cut from the final game despite having fully completed and functional models. I can easily see Fandango being cut if they didn't want to run any copyright/licensing risks with Dodge considering it's basically identical to the Durango from its name to its appearance. I have no idea about the other two. I'm surprised to see Jester here too
This was an amazing discovery regarding Hot Wheels games! I saw someone who uploaded development build footage of stunt track challenge (gameplay included!). I really do hope you can find that one at some point in the future as it also had cut content such as Silhouette II and free use of the “gold cars”. On a sidenote, interesting that Sling Shot doesn’t appear in this build of the game. It was alleged that it’s also a cut car as well.
Edit: I forgot to mention free use of the challenge and racing cars in all missions. Game breaks included!!
The screenshots featuring SlingShot are from an extremely early internal development build (>Jan 2002, pre alpha for sure), and there's evidence it may have been overwritten by one of the other cars (Sling can be seen in the game code and I think it might be referring to MS-T Suzuka). For that to show up you'd probably need an early internal build, and for what I've heard Beyond Games' material might be lost to time in that regard.
If something for the other games shows up in the future I'll most likely try to secure it, but I'm not aware of anyone with one that might potentially sell it atm. I do have more protos to get researched and released in 2024 but there's no more HW among them yet.
I have been searching for this game for years, I couldn't remember the name, only remembered how it looked like and some game content cutscenes like "what happened? Where's dad?" and no matter what i'd put in a search bar, it almost seemed like this game never existed. These animations were so ahead of its time back then, I'm surprised to know there are not a lot of people that know about this game.
Just watched the entire video and it is incredible! This brought back old memories of me playing this game as a kid on my PS2! Thank you so much for recording this for all of us to watch what was and what wasn’t going to become Velocity X like it is today (or at least when it released)! :D
Btw, I’m so thankful that the music on the “Press Start Button” screen was not the final version. I say that because it would’ve sounded extremely traumatizing to me as a child. It’s got a THX Logo vibe to it (which I hated back then). XD
I did a lot of looking into this back in September, and had few finds that I put off on publishing.
Jester, Fandango, and Sweet 16 II were seemingly removed due to licensing issues. In an IGN article published August 2nd, 2002, discussing the game they mentioned that the PS2 version would have 33 different cars, and the GameCube version would have 35 "(given successful licensing)". It's also worth noting the original scope of the game was to have 45+ cars in initial statements on THQ and Beyond Games' websites in January 2002, which would later be toned down to only 35 in that August article. That probably explains the Purple Passion model on that person's portfolio. I have no idea what the other missing cars would be.
Of the photos I'd found, one was a photo of the E3 May 2002 build where it mostly resembles the current UI, with the small exception that the navigation arrow was still red like in the pre-alpha. I went looking for more screenshots of this build but never really came up on any- I still have one way I can get my hands on a few screenshots of that build, but I put it off for a good while and it mostly amounts to brute forcing something that I'm not even sure would have something significant.
Another was a second screenshot of Slingshot in the pre-alpha, from the THQ website. It's in terrible quality unfortunately.
Finally, I'd found a photo of Sweet 16 II in game, but I'd held off so long on publishing it that it's not much of a find anymore given this build, lol
If you want, I can try to link the photos in the replies, but I'm not sure if TH-cam will remove the comment if I do that
Also! Thank you for publishing this awesome build!
I actually found the Sweet 16 II screenshot myself yesterday while looking through wayback machine, the rest of this is news to me though, nice one!
never thought id see this
I knew Sweet 16 II was going to be an inclusion at one point since a 3D model artist for the game shared what it looked like with Purple Passion and a few other completed cars, and I knew of Fandango because iirc it was seen on a billboard poster along with a few other cars, (One of which is I think unidentifiable) but I had absolutely no idea that Jester was ever considered for any version of Velocity X since it's seen absolutely nowhere else prior to this.
Another crazy part is that this is likely far from the only prototype as well. I already mentioned Purple Passion and other billboard cars, and there could be some that still ended up in the GBA game as well, but we know there’s also Slingshot out there somewhere, and if Jester of all cars is found in one of these builds then only God knows what other cars were modeled and/or considered. I suppose in retrospect it makes sense that Jester was considered since it also appeared in future games like World Race and Stunt Track Challenge, but my question is how a detail like that went completely unnoticed for so long when the whole point of that game was to sell toy cars?
Whatever the reason, I'm glad we got at least *one* significant prototype build preserved, and I'm glad someone was mad enough to document everything even with no prior knowledge to this game and in just 2 days. I imagine World Race/Acceleracers and Hot Wheels fans in general would've been up to do that already considering how insane we can get, (Yes I'm one of them) so that just makes this even more impressive if true, and considering all the work that went into this I believe it.
One can only hope that more builds of old Hot Wheels games will keep surfacing in the future, even if it won't be all of them. It's amazing that something so "forgotten" by most people now still technically has a niche but dedicated fanbase. It's like Luke Skywalker once said: "No one's ever really gone…"
Also, I know it's unlikely, but I would like to see the three unused cars here touched up on and modded into the final game without replacing any of the others. It's not a big deal, but childhood me would've loved to see that since the main appeal of this game is the many cars it has. I know there's a lot more other unused cars as well, but since the models of these are found someone should try it.
I'm glad I was able to preserve it! Just a couple corrections though: this took me way longer to research in this detail than just 2 days, for what I can tell I started work on it on 24th November. It was about a month of research during my free time (and in between me getting everything else finalised for Project Velocity). Also, despite not having directly played it before I was pretty clued up on Velocity X beforehand, particularly the cut content. I had planned to get around to playing it for a few years now, I just wasn't expecting it to be THIS version I started with lol. World Race was the HW game I grew up with.
Slingshot I don't have a ton of hope for surfacing, the build that car was screenshotted from is almost certainly an EXTREMELY early internal build that never even left the game studio, and the chance of it surviving lies purely on what the developers may have saved from the studio closing (which was not long after the game released).
@@MOVGAMES. Perhaps a copy or so of very early builds were eventually sold after the studio was shut down? I doubt that only one copy would exist for each version since it was for development among a team after all. I know it's not likely, but even stranger things have resurfaced before when it comes to lost media, even in more recent times. I'm aware things that used to be lost can be partially found and then lost again, (That's what happened with me a few years ago regarding the DisneyQuest soundtrack, all preview song remnants are now completely gone, and for all I know probably the company that made them as well) but even though some things can still get lost, found, and lost again today, I think Velocity X in particular and other Hot Wheels content from around that era has less of a chance to go unnoticed by now since it's still a big part of the World Race/Acceleracers community, (It uses a lot of the World Race game cars and a lot of the story templates seem to be copied from it after all) and lost media has been occasionally popping up in regards to that stuff more recently too to help paint a narrative of what at least the toys and main car designs could've been. Lost media for that community goes back a long way too, that discovery of Titanium I believe was in the early 2010's and was found in an obscure German magazine of all places, along with another alternate color scheme for Acceleron Reverb that uses hot pink.
Needless to say, while yes I do think it would be difficult, it's not impossible. After all if one of the developers was able to show the 3D models of some cars that weren't even in the final build, (Or any version we have at all yet like with Purple Passion) then I think it's safe to say there's still a lot of material left to find. And honestly who knows how long Slingshot was considered to be in the game during that development, some crucial pieces are still missing here and this build is still one that's only two months away from the final release. If things can change that quickly in two months, then there's no denying that a lot more has changed before then. It would certainly explain a lot of the other cars that still ended up in the GBA version and a few for the billboards. There might also be some models of cars like Speed Blaster or XS-IVE out there for example, or early texture versions of a car like Greased Lightnin', which is equally just as crazy to think about.
In any case, this is all still extremely interesting to learn about. I grew up with I think all of the PS2 Hot Wheels games as a kid and a few of the GBA ones, and seeing that Velocity X has gone through a whole bunch of changes (Probably the most amount of them for a single Hot Wheels game) is interesting both for a video game's perspective, and the thought processes of what would eventually give us World Race. To say that I was a huge fan of World Race and Acceleracers even when they were all relatively new would be an understatement, so it's almost impossible for me to not be intrigued by preserving the history.
And yes, I am very glad you were able to preserve it, had the money to afford it, and not keep it to yourself like some other collectors would over the years as well only for them to potentially be lost again, sort of like with Marble Madness II since the build we have is a different one that was found from someone who also found a version of it earlier. He still hasn't dumped that ROM of it by the way. All that effort only to be immortalized as a selfish "one of a kind" owner jerk like it's some sort of sacred Indiana Jones artifact. *It belongs in a museum!* (The museum in this case being the internet) What a waste whenever that happens…
Apologies in advance for so much mountains of text being placed into comments like this by the way. *Lol*
@@ZacharyDietze Your last paragraph is unfortunately a fate some World Race builds suffered, someone in the mid 2010s showed off that they owned multiple internal builds for World Race (that they had bought from a company liquidation sale) that never saw the light of day. Someone else did release a PC build though so that was cool.
Yeah I am not a hoarder by any stretch, anything unpreserved that I possess will absolutely get released... sometimes kinda slowly but I'm not always the fastest worker! I've already done so in the past with old game magazine DVD's, lost Vinesauce stream vods, old removed vgm remixes from over a decade ago etc. I have several additional game prototypes to release throughout this year :)
Since there's a lot to reply to here I'll add a bit more to this reply in a bit.
EDIT: Yeah it's not impossible for one to have survived, but internal builds would generally only have one disc burned for the majority of the time as it would be used once and then shelved once they started on the next revision. That Slingshot most likely existed in multiple up to a certain date though for sure, any build from before May/June ish probably has some sort of chance.
Journalist builds (and trade show floor builds for games that were lucky enough to get a feature as they'd usually have multiple machines) did usually get multiple copies made for all the different outlets (someone pointed out in the HVX discord that the build in the IGN multiplayer videos featuring the people playing in a room seems to either match or is a near identical build to this one), some Ratchet & Clank 1 builds have been found three times over on different discs, but with these there's also the roulette of if any even survived. The rule for these discs after the outlets had finished with their previews or reviews was to send the discs back or to destroy them, so some copies were obliterated outright from the get go. Then there's disc rot, which is a big problem if they haven't been stored properly, Part 1 of Project Velocity was actually supposed to have another released disc but it was unfortunately beyond saving, half the data had simply vanished.
@@MOVGAMES. Wait really? That sucks so much! Unlike the DisneyQuest case though that didn't have much attention or people taking care of it, to me it sounds like the owner only showed off some gameplay and never attempted to release them. Sounds like that person is another hoarder. What a terrible situation to be in.
That's good. Preserving anything, no matter how small, should always be priority number one, at least for historical purposes if nothing else. One man's trash is another man's treasure. Funny that you mention Vinesauce though, I'm a longtime fan of that too hahaha.
Fair enough, I'm sure you have a lot of things to say with the things you are trying to keep up with, no need to rush. Keep up the good work!
@@MOVGAMES. I forgot to ask, but who was the person responsible for saying that there would be more World Race builds released but never were? I'm curious.
Anyways, yes that is very insightful. Disc rot and more limited than they should be copies are exactly why I'm surprised that this prototype build was even found in the first place, let alone for a licensed game. And I agree, I feel like at least Sligshot, Purple Passion, and maybe some other unknown cars like 40 Somethin' (Since it came with some copies of the game) or Monoposto (Sine it was in concept art) might exist in some other builds of the game. I do think that the build the screenshot was taken of Slingshot most likely no longer exists, but yeah I don't think they would've scrapped a finished looking car like that for awhile without a good reason. The three unused cars here look completely fine but were still removed within a two month time frame, and honestly who knows why that was even done, especially Jester since that was a same year debut car like a few others.
One of them you found was beyond saving? I'm sorry to hear that, it must've been an awful thing to realize. What was it for? Was it 100% unusable, or was there at least a tiny bit of data you were able to salvage before further irreparable damage?
I could cry
Hey, would you mind me taking screenshots from this video of the cut vehicles for the Hot Wheels wiki?
Not at all! In fact if I was still on my PC tonight I would have grabbed real HQ screenshots directly for you. The build itself is uploaded now too, got it up a few hours ago now.
I love you
see anything bout the planned Sling Shot that never made it?
I'm somewhat sure that SlingShot straight up became one of the other vehicles later in development, most likely MS-T Suzuka. I poked around (somewhat poorly) in the main CARS file and there's text lines referring to "Sling" in there, yet I couldn't find any text for Suzuka. I also saw a video someone had made a while back which seemingly shows unused headlight graphics for Suzuka in the PC version and they seemed awfully similar to where SlingShot's would be placed.
The build that one screenshot is from is an incredibly early internal build (Beyond Games most likely only sent raw game B Roll footage and screenshots to the press outlets rather than an actual physical build at that point) and I can't even find it's original source it was uploaded to (Giantbomb has it but that site only started in 2008, and I can't see it on old versions of IGN) so it's probably from the initial January 2002 press release material or my even predate that as an old screenshot they included in the press materials.
YOU ARE COOL
I hate that tire squeal sound so much, it sounds like that Nerf This video. Is that in the base game too?
We need new improve hot wheels Velocity X video game on the ps5. 👀
Wait is this ACTUALLY real???
Sure is!
Oh i'm definitely gonna check it out cause it looks awesome