Hidden stuff in dummy files

Mods - Not sure if this is the place for this thread, so feel free to move it as needed.

I recently read that the dummy files in the Bloody Roar 4 for PS2 were in fact a zip file containing Renderware SDK.
I'm sure I read about one or two similar cases (maybe a dummy file containing some source code) in other games/platforms, though can't remember the details.

I tried doing some searches, but my google-fu is failing me.

Is there a list of such "fails" somewhere?
Or maybe we can use this thread to create such list?

 

The most famous one was that the dummy file on Konami's _Beatmania Best Hits_ was the complete source code for the Beatmania 5th mix append disc.

 

Don't know of any such list - so why not start one?

The Windows XP setup disc has (an encrypted version of) Microsoft Bob in a padding file. Unfortunately(?) you can't get to it, because the encryption key was random keyboard mashing.

 

The best one was the south park episode on a NBA game I think.

Edit: Nope Tiger Woods

 

Well look like you're just like me I find the renderwate in the dummy files and I want to use it with the Ps2 sdk so I can make some games
And I was looking for the same thing and I find this I hope it will help you
http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?p=1627328

 

That's some great VHS quality there

Looks like we're onto something with a list.

 

Never really found much in dummy files (because usually I assume they're just there for space occupancy) but if I had to make an assumption, a lot of dreamcast games could potentially have some stuff in there.

 

The layer fill .bin files on the Saints Row 1 disc seem to be actual binary data but I haven't looked into it much

 

It's not crazy uncommon for game dummy files to contain actual data (usually random video or repeat files). I think I did this once or twice in a ps1 title. I think eventually devs stop being so dumb and just created zeroed out files instead.

 

Can't remember which was which but Giants Citizen Kabuto and Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force both have large padding files with text in them. One is "FUCKFUCKFUCK" over and over for 300mb. The other has a file that says something like "YOUSHOULDNTBESEEINGTHIS".

 

x

 

This is a great thread. I'm curious to see what else is out there. I'm sure there;s a bunch.

 

bump~

according to this reddit thread
the psp copy of tony hawk underground 2 remix NTSC is in strident.bin on the ps2 game, dreamworks shrek super slam
https://www.reddit.com/r/ps2/comments/6y8pn6/psp_game_inside_a_ps2_game_as_a_dummy_file/

and yesterday i found 2 games have hidden files
ps2 looney tunes space race, includes a ton of development files in a zip, literally a ton of photoshop psd files, models, textures etc.
and the game oni for ps2 has files marked 0-18, without extesions, most of them are bink video files and they are betas/ported from the pc version, most notably file 18 is the credits very unpolished and standard, at the end of credits it mentions press f1 for a cheat

so our list so far looks like this

[PS2]
bloody roar 4 NTSC - Renderware SDK
_Beatmania Best Hits_ - complete source code to Beatmania 5th mix append
looney tunes space race - tons of development files
oni - beta or pc version bink videos for cutscenes
dreamworks shrek super slam - PSP copy of tony hawk underground 2 remix


[PS1]
tiger woods 99 - southpark pilot

 

For some reason, the Sega Screams Vol. 2 sampler for Saturn is padded out with a vintage news clip of a beached whale being destroyed using explosives... This can't be accessed on actual hardware (to my knowledge, at least), but will run fine if viewed using a PC drive. Curiously, this video is encoded in the same Cinepak format as other clips included on the disc, so maybe there is a way to watch it on actual hardware?

 

Phantasmagoria for Saturn has some bikinis movies in the last disk, I never found why...never did a good research, though.

 

Slightly off topic, but the CD mastering software they used to make the PC-Engine version of Art of Fighting didn't zero out the CD image prior to writing data, and as a result big chunks of unused space from the hard drive of the computer being used were included in the CD image. As a result the Art of Fighting source code was leaked.

Not exactly the same as a dummy file, but similar non the less?

 

Cool! Not off-topic at all
I mentioned Dummy files, as that's what I knew about, but doesn't matter where it's hidden.

 

I'm unable to verify that. Unless it's in a part of the image that didn't get caught by the disc dumps currently floating around (the one I looked at was an iso track, a .cue and a bunch of .apes, which of course isn't ideal), or I'm just being daft...?

 

The data in question would have been located on the empty space of the CD. I doubt internet rips copy the whole CD verbatim like that. Your best bet would be to get a real PCE CD-ROM and start from there. The source code files should be compressed in *.LZW, and some of that data might be fragmented. I'm sure someone released special tools to extract the data at the time, but I don't know if anyone saved them. In any case, the code is in the wild so I'm sure if you just wanted to see the source for the game you could find it.

 

That reminds me, the Military Madness APK for Android contains parts of its source code. The files end in ".java~" or sth along those lines so it seems the exclusion filter didn't catch them.
They're not dummy files though, so may be off topic. meh.