Russian PSX Beta's Explanation

Here I am going too quickly explain this to you guys as I am an Oddworld collector I will use the Abe's Exoddus Beta as an example and as i own the Russian beta listed on this site Abe's Exoddus Late Beta (RUS) its seems appropriate and also i own a very rare early beta of Abe's Exoddus so keep note.

As some of you may know Russia does not and has never had a PSX market, No games were ever released by Sony to Russia so no games in Russia are genuine. All games released or bought in Russia are copies and pirated. What has happened is Russia some how attained copies of Abe Exoddus beta's they were then dubbed and translated in Russia for the Russian to use and play. If you can tell all the character voices sound the exact same as one Russian guy has spoken over the original voices for all these versions. Russia has released the beta on this site and a final version that was dubbed and translated later on. The question is what happened to the original Beta/Prototype that was English ?. A lot of Russians claim as I have read on Russian forums that the game gets completely redone in Russia so its not really a beta its there version of the game edited by developers and they had the wrong codes so the animations and screens were different. However ! I believe it is a translated beta as I have attained an Original Earlier beta to the one seen here, and it has not been dubbed or translated it is still in English PAL. The version I have is so early it only has disk 1 and there are a lot of differences and bugs ! I bought this beta from Russia but it wasn't dubbed or translated its in PAL English and looks like an original beta as it has coding on the disk. So the question is:

Do you think Russia have redone the game themselves and have changed things due to error of programming eg. Wrong Animations, Missing Objects, Different Screens ?
or
Do you think Russia have attained Beta's and have translated it too Russian language and dubbing ?

No one will ever know but me attaining an English Original early beta from Russia makes me think did they attain beta's and translate them themselves ?, I have tried to explain this to everyone so they have a wider understanding about the Russian market because like I said before Russians claim that they re-program the game that's why it has differences.

Thanks
Adbxt93

 

actually in russia a few licensed games released in the early 2000s

 

I guess it's possible that Russian people have translated some prototype games, but the true question is: how did they get them? xD

P.S. Nice find about the early beta of Abe's Exoddus!!

 

any russian gaming magazines could get a preview version. pirates bought cd from him and tried to sell it as quickly as possible as full game.

 

Sony almost never were released games on russian language for Russia*
For example in Moscow/other cities you were able to buy original licensed ps1 games, but price for it was like 2-4 new playstation consoles... So some people (pirates, but they dont know such name yet) starting to make cheap copy of games for people, who live ouside of big cities, plus later they learning how to hack and translate the game. Again later they were able to download games from the internet (more then half country was not have access to the net in this time - 1991-20xx) - and in the closed segment of the net maybe they was able to download/buy beta games and such stuff, then make copy for internal russian market. Or they may have friends on the europe/usa in the game industry too, anyway there is about 10 (?) beta 'russian' games, i guess, it's pretty small amount.

i know also games, that were in beta status on russian bootleg disks:
Duke Nukem TtK
Tomb Raider V

also there is custom games, based on erotic date simulator from dos and similar things, some of them pretty technology and unique, but most is trash.

 

Can you share some links?

Highly unlikely. Back at the time Russia had only grey market of PlayStation games. Each console you could buy were already modified with a modchip and a lot of people even didn't knew a thing about original games/region/etc. If you want to play a game - you go to shop and buy any. First, price of any disc was around $2-$4, majority of discs (I would say around 97%) were ill-translated to Russian. All of these discs were of different region, and nobody complained, as PAL PSX console was able to show NTSC games in PAL60 mode.
Main business of "companies" who sold these discs was getting originals from somewhere, and just do Russian translation. Almost always translation was shitty, they were removing lowercase English letters and substituting them with Russian (there are 31 symbols in Russian, and 26 in English, so somehow they needed to get extra 5 ). Also they were introducing a lot of bugs because of such binary translation . Anyway you ended up playing game with bad Russian grammar, only capital letters and variety of bugs.
Later when PS2 became available, there were even projects called "DeRUS" for some games, which patched back game iso back to English language (internet was slow at the time, so you were dumping your game disc to PC, downloading much smaller patch from internet, apply it - and voila, you got vanilla English version of game ).

Exactly, they just translated the version they were able to get.

 

I found what you said very interesting thanks for sharing your opinion and it does make a lot of sense. Am guessing they have bought beta's without realising and as they were cheaper back then they released them to the public after being badly dubbed so the Russian gaming community can play the game .

Thanks man will be happy to share if you wanted it

 

It seems common for betas of that era to have slipped out on to the European street markets where piracy is abundant, places such as Spain and Italy were known for various beta finds. Perhaps from lax copyright laws it was less of a personal obligation for some media staff to keep a tight hold of their content. Europe and Russia are PAL territories after all, it wouldn't be too surprising for a European magazine to review an English title, so perhaps that was its place of origin before making its way to the eastern boarders.

It's intersting to hear the history of this build, it seems like it has a lot to tell. Thanks for sharing.

 

Really? It'd be amazing! Thank you very very much!!

 

What can be interesting is returning this translated beta to it's original state.
(final version resources can be used if differences in text/audio are insignificant)

 

sometimes this is possible

 

Once I had Tenchu copy with unfinished CGI intro.
It was NTSC US game (maybe translated to russian I do not remember) with Shinobi Gaiden (JP only release) unfinished CGI. Some parts were without textures and/or placeholder models.

 

Media piracy is big business in Russia. So big in fact that official SONY/Warner factories press bootlegs, they are "rented" to the mob at night when the factory is supposed to be closed. Also it is common knowledge in Russia that the pirates almost always have industry insiders supplying them with workprints, screeners, betas, demo albums, etc.

 

Not anymore. Fast internet killed commercial piracy a few years ago.
Just like Steam and others destroyed retail market, like local store doesn't sell PC games anymore, only PS3, X360, Vita and 3DS plus about 100 PSP/DS games.

As for insiders - most leaks happen in US or Japan. I remember having access to few 0day FTPs, that was the time, to download a few gigabytes on 33.6 dialup was quite an achievement

For PSX era, well most of the discs were pirate back then because Sony didn't bother about russian market back then. But there were a few official localized games (MediEvil and about 10 others).
And remember funny thing about original discs prices in a few stores back then, i bought 30 (yes, 30) games for a price of one modern PC AAA game in 99. New, sealed and not some discount movie-based trash, but games like Final Fantasy VII, Twisted Metal 2 etc.

 

Correction: Fast internet killed commercial piracy [in Moscow and Saint Petersburg].
The rest of the country still relies on piracy where it's the go to source for audiovisual entertainment.

 

Correction: not only Moscow and Saint Petersburg, but pretty much every city in european part of the country. Of course there are parts where internet is outrageously expensive or pretty much unavailable (like rural areas, as mobile internet isn't that good even in cities and when you are far from base station it's nothing but email, i remember how i made a mistake - launched Steam with GSM modem on - it took a day to download that 1Gb update) and no retail stores, but it's no longer really "rest of the country"

 

Here for example you can see text-translated TR Chronicles beta (tested by me original disk, 100% beta version inside), looking like usual retail russian bootleg disk, nothing special, without any marks of 'non retail' (only pirate company logo - Diamond Studio). Was sold in the central Russia on the regular shops and street markets, nobody really knew this is the beta in those times, while playing. But some people noticed that in-game characters not talking in the game videos, only lips is moving without sound, but their friend's TR5 version (with another pirate company logo on cover) got the sound.



I remember disgruntled buyer that came to shop ask for exchange this TR5 to 'normal with sound', buyer was thinking like "game is corrupted maybe and disk was damaged" lol.

 

I have the Abe's Exoddus Beta that OP talked about there,and I can confirm that it's a beta version,like all of you say.
I've played disc 1 and after Necrum Mines I could spot several FMVs placed where they shouldn't be,some cams being different and such.
Also,the russian beta version has the inability to use cheats.I've tried the level select cheat and nothing,absolutely NOTHING happened.
Pirate company logo on this one was SRU(also named "Vector",and they had a custom black PS license logo(when booting the disc),with the license text being усские версии - 1998.

Here's some info from psxplanet.ru,and some screenshots of the russian version of the beta:

INFO:

Cover:
View attachment 10160 View attachment 10161 View attachment 10159 View attachment 10162

 

Now I recall I've had exactly same game at that time!

 

I have that game too,but my copy is on 2 Princo discs.It's because I don't live in Russia,I had to burn them to normal CD-Rs.