When it comes to video game consoles, the original PlayStation stands as a landmark and a turning point for the industry. Incorporating disc technology and providing a beautiful focus on 3D games, it hosted some of the 90’s most ahead of their time games, with titles like Final Fantasy VII prominently among them.
The PlayStation’s catalog of games is filled with standout titles, but not every proposed title for the then-new system made the cut. This was the fate of many starting developers whose games fell by the wayside for one reason or another. One of these development teams put together a title for the PlayStation that, while seen and appreciated by Sony, never saw the light of day. Now, thanks to the effort of one programmer, it is finally complete.
The game in question had the title Magic Castle, and was made over the course of eight months by a dev team. These days, developers creating games for the PS5 are granted access to the exclusive PS5 dev kit, but access to the PlayStation was more general. Magic Castle was one of many games created with Net Yaroze, a PlayStation dev kit marketed to coding hobbyists, and was one of many games submitted to Sony over the lifecycle of the PlayStation.
Unlike titles that were ported to the PlayStation, Magic Castle was always created to be a PlayStation title, and presented to Sony upon completion. When brought before Sony, the design of the game was praised, but Sony did not want to go forward with Magic Castle itself. The team did not want to drop Magic Castle and work on another project, so there the story ended… until now. One of Magic Castle‘s original devs, going by PIROWO, re-discovered the game’s source code and, after a little polish, released the game to the public.
The game certainly looks like a PlayStation throwback, with an isometric style and and simple premise of conquering the castle in question. Its current status as an extremely post-console release could have made it one of the PlayStation’s rarest titles, but PIROWO has opened it up to anyone with an emulator.
With the PS5 still out of many players’ hands, nostalgia for previous systems may well rise. Beyond new releases of old and previously unfinished games, Numbskull has released throwback PlayStation merch for fans of the classic system. While Magic Castle is unlikely to start a post-PlayStation craze, there’s always a chance it inspires something and takes on new life, and is an interesting time capsule as well as a fun game to check out.
Source: Kotaku
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