Early Prototypes of Quake, Fantastep Dumped

A group of SegaXtreme community members banded together to buy and dump a pair of Saturn prototypes: one of Quake, and one of Fantastep.

VBT made a thread at 7:24 p.m. EDT Wednesday with a link to download the prototypes’ files, but he warned for others to be quick because the upload would expire in three days.

The Fantastep prototype is actually labeled “Dreamknight for Saturn” — according to Sega Retro, citing a 1995 UK brochure of upcoming Saturn games, Dreamknight would have been the title of a localized version.

The Quake disc’s header gives a build date of Aug. 19, 1997, about three and a half months before its release on Saturn. The “Dreamknight” disc’s header shows a boilerplate date of Nov. 22, 1994, the Japanese launch date of the Saturn.

The latest file modification dates on the Dreamknight disc are Sept. 24, 1996, about seven months before Fantastep launched in Japan. The latest file modification dates on the Quake disc are Aug. 20, 1997.

Fantastep, a 3D adventure game, was developed and published by Jaleco for the Saturn and PlayStation exclusively in Japan in April 1997.

Quake, an FPS originally developed for PC by id Software, was ported by Lobotomy Software to the Saturn and published by Sega in late November 1997 in Europe and early December 1997 in North America.

The two games appear not to be linked aside from being Saturn prototypes that both may have been in the hands of a collector of prototypes.

“There [were] two buyers before [the] donators and me,” VBT told SHIRO!. “So I don’t know who is the initial seller.”

In the thread, VBT thanked the SegaXtreme community, prototype preservation site Hidden Palace and the seller, as well as a list of donators that included himself:

• Bo Bayles
• ndiddy
• Frogbull
• Tongara
• Fafling
• Wesker
• Cerbero
• Pinchy
• VBT

Fantastep, aka Dreamknight

The “Dreamknight” disc does appear to be an early in-progress English localization prototype. All of the opening cutscene’s spoken dialogue is still in Japanese, but the main menu is now in English.

The options menu is partially translated. It lacks the Japanese version’s “option” header at the top as well as its control setup and volume options. The labels for the sound and music tests are invisible, as is the “return to main menu” option at the bottom.

There’s another invisible option in the Dreamknight menu that isn’t on the Japanese Fantastep menu, though: If you press down three times and press C on the proto’s options menu, you get a gallery of concept art. Pressing C on a picture reveals its title followed by the artist’s notes.

This concept art gallery may be an unlockable feature in the final game, but SHIRO! is unable to confirm that at this time.

The main game doesn’t seem to have any text translated yet, but SHIRO! only played the first few minutes.

Quake

There may be a lot of differences between this new August prototype of Quake and the final version, but SHIRO! played the first few minutes and found quite a few worth mentioning.

Firstly, the prototype begins with a simple black screen that allows testers to cycle through all the levels inserted into the game at that point in development.

Next, the 3D scene that displays before the main menu is similar between the two games, but the text is different. The final version only says “press start to begin” while the prototype cycles from “press start” to copyright information to the message “Lobotomy kicks ass” when the Lobotomy logo is on screen.

After starting a new game, there are no “normal” and “easy” portals as in the final Quake. There’s just one unmarked portal.

In the next room, when choosing which episode to tackle, the prototype has no on-screen episode descriptions like the final game has. The torch on the far wall isn’t glitchy in the prototype like it is in the final game when standing at the distance shown in the screenshots below, though.

The first couple rooms of Episode One appear to be very similar.

If you see any more differences in the Quake prototype, or you play the Fantastep/Dreamknight prototype far enough to find more localization, let us know in the comments below!