Timesplitters 4 prototype appears on Ebay

TimeSplitters, the legendary game series developed by Free Radical Design, has been the subject of a fervent Reddit discussion as a development kit (Devkit) from the studio surfaces on eBay.

The first-person shooter has been revered by fans and took the torch from games like the iconic Goldeneye and Perfect Dark that made waves on the Nintendo 64.

There were three iterations of the series with the original game released on PlayStation 2 in 2000. Then came Timesplitters 2 on the Sony console and for the first time on Xbox and Nintendo’s Game Cube. The last installment, TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, was released only on Playstation and Xbox in 2005.

Now, a surprising post on the selling platform has led to a user snapping up the prototype version of TimeSplitters 4.  Flimsy-Zebra3775, who also goes by “Lukeye” posted an image of a PlayStation 3, including a thumbnail for TimeSplitters 4 dated July 11, 2008.

The tale follows the Redditor interacting with a PS3 SubReddit and his findings in the development kit from Free Radical’s development team from 2008.

“I asked the seller a lot of probing questions without giving it away, they indeed had a friend who worked at Free Radical until November 2008 a month before the studio shut down,” the Redditor would tell fans of the series looking for more information.

Lukeye would go on that the title “boots up to a main menu, you can launch into the level and the loading into it has the typical TS [TimeSplitters] monkey on it.”

The monkey in question was a feature of the series including a teaser trailer for the shelved fourth title on YouTube:

Several users eagerly awaiting the contents of this gaming treasure chest gave the Redditor advice on the best way to safely add the contents to an archive site via PC transfer.

Redditor Virtual Relic would urge Lukeye to reach out to professional archivists after concerns that the trove could be lost:

“It is possible for an individual to dump a PS3 game themselves, but it isn’t easy for a beginner to know how to set up an SDK and FTP neighborhood connection, plus there’s plenty of opportunity for things to go wrong. This could be the only working prototype of TS4 2008 left in existence, it is best-taken care of by professionals. Video Game History Foundation is a great option.”

Free Radical closed its doors permanently last year after a failed re-start, but this find on the digital storefront gives fans of the series the ability to travel back to 2008 and see what could have been for the PlayStation 3 version of the game.

Image credit: Unsplash.

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