Release: Metroid Prime Beta

I present a first party beta (Alpha?)

Originally I shedded some light on this prototype over at digitpress:

"I recently received a digital copy of a Metroid Prime prototype for the Gamecube. Judging by the size and how little files there are, this appears to be a very early beta, maybe even alpha. there is even different music after opening it up with GCE and listening to it in VGMstream. I don't have a Wii to play backups, so this is the best I can do. Dolphin gives me a black screen.

I'm debating what I should do with it; PM me if you are interested for whatever reason. I'm not saying I'm accepting offers for this, but I'm open while I'm contemplating on what I should do with this. I'd give a music file for proof, but I'd be foolish to do so. All I know about it is that the .gcm file is called "DOL-GM8-USA", and I don't have a dumped copy to compare between my two US version copies. The file is 468MB.

I've released stuff before, but this is a Nintendo/Retro Studios Prototype.

I will work on getting access to a Wii with a backup loading application soon. Until then -Cheers."

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=154209

I also mentioned its existence here:
http://board.gscentral.org/showthread.php/51852-Metroid-Prime-Beta

Download:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/31204688/mR013P.rar

I have plenty more stuff to share.

 

Wow. I was waiting for the day that something like this would show up. You know, I love you for this. Now all I need to see is a Pikmin prototype and I will die a happy man <3

 

Certainly out of nowhere! Thanks for sharing it with everyone! Id love to see some video.

BTW, Dolphin can run it, but you'll need a beast machine. I am getting 0.50 fps... And I am gunna stop it now that I see it says Nintendo and Retro Studios.

Someone run this bastard! This isn't the demo is it? I have no knowledge of searching .gcm files and don't feel like learning.

 

How unexpected, Thanks!

 

I'm gonna get it running in just a bit. I'll take pictures, but they'll be with a shitty phone camera

Edit: Okay, it's burned and running, although it has seemed pretty much like the final so far but with some music missing and some music sounded different (although it may just be trying to run surround sound on my crappy little tv)

Edit: Another update, this has an earlier hud for sure, says Energy next to, Samus's energy. The hud text is very different, and the pause screen is pretty basic. It returns to the title screen after so long of playing, a demo perhaps? Still pre-release material nonetheless

Edit (again): Okay, played as far as I could. Basically, you beat parasite queen, get to the elevator to escape (without encountering Meta Ridley or getting your suit damaged by the explosion) and then a success screen shows up showing how quickly you completed the ship. After that, back to the title screen. Nothing too interesting on the surface, just a demo with pretty much final elements in play, just an enabled ice beam and changed hud and some events missing. I suppose most of the interesting stuff is hiding in the actual gcm. Anyway, have fun if you're gonna try to pick this apart, I'm still busy with Sonic CD 510, so I can't be of much help. Nice release nonetheless

 

Thank you for this! Can't wait to give it a try;D
Edit: Just opened it up in Gc-tool and theirs some pretty interesting things on the disk;P
Anyways Here's the ISO Details:
Name: Long Game Name (?)
Serial: DOL-GM8E-USA
Country:USA/NTSC
Markercode:0x01
Date:2002/04/10
TOC-Size = 1344

Also it seems like the banner icon is corrupt.

 

My i7 with a GeForce GT 320m is getting 15-20fps in the more intensive areas. Low end i7 and GPU as well.

Glad you decided to release this, kinda looks like a demo but as demonstrated by plenty of other demos much can exist within them to prove interesting.

Oh hello Mr Hex editor, what have you today?

Really now? Anything else?

Actor ScanThingy.C1

Addendum:

Appears some of that is in a number of GameCube titles if not most.

 

I'll post some pictures soon guys..as well

Very big Metroid fan here Thank you so much for the share. What else do you have?

 

I have tons of other things to be released. I'm a Metroid fan myself and I find many of the vast differences between the early beta and even the kiosk demos intriguing.

Runs on Dolphin build 7575 quite nicely for me. I will have some videos on my Youtube channel soon.

 

Some quick shots 3 minutes ago

banner:

 

All that and the filesize of 468MB nensondubois mentioned point to it being exactly the same as the demo version from some of the early kiosk demos:
http://jul.rustedlogic.net/thread.php?id=10354
http://tcrf.net/Metroid_Prime#Demo_Version

Currently downloading it anyway - and thanks for bringing this to the attention of more people, really! - to see if there might be more to it, tho I'm not too positive...

 

Yeah, I hope you didn't have to pay for this, cuz it sounds like someone just chopped the demo out of an interactive kiosk disc.

fwiw I own a bunch of the kiosk discs, and I recall one of them if you removed the playtime limit on the prime demo the game would eventually just crash as you escaped the pirate ship while you were exiting the exhaust corridors, presumably due to missing resources

 

mirror is down. I can provide FTP to help distro

 

Please do!

 

ya I guess dropbox hates sharing, mirror it up and I'll compare it to my demo disc

 

if its not a beta,take a look at this:
PS:thanks for the screen jerokiller!!

 

mirror?

 

First is this release, second the image as ripped from one of the kiosk demos.

Welcome to the Metroid Prime Beta
Airlock repressurization successful

Note how 1) the "Welcome to..." text is a tiny bit shorter than the "Airlock..." text, and 2) note how there's approximately two spaces between "Beta" and the full stop. Also, why would any developer welcome someone to a "Beta", not to mention at this point in the game, where you've already traversed two rooms before even reaching this point?

Now, I'm not trying to allege anything here, but I am kinda feeling like this has been hacked in there deliberately to mislead people.

Edit:

 

Can you run a comparison of the two images through your hex editor? Hex Workshop allows me to do such a thing, would be interesting to see if that concept holds any water.

Devs are also well known to do amusing things like that though. Usually not well known within Nintendo 1st party games or that blatantly obvious such as in DOOM with John Romero's(?) head on a pike hidden behind a wall.

 

Currently running a comparison, that screenshot has been the first result. It's over halfway done and hasn't picked up anything else yet...

...well, the comparison is done, and no other differences were found.