Not exactly a collector, but anyway

[Krishty]

Hi there!

I’m not much of a physical collector, but I’ll try and present my “collection” anyway.

I like to crack open data formats just for the sake of it. Some call it data mining, but for me it’s more of a puzzle I like to solve. Makes me relax.

In the past years I had a look at Ace Combat 2 & 3 for the original PlayStation. AC3 contains two unused levels. While it was long clear to hackers that something was there, I was probably first to see them in their entirety.

An early draft of Expo City with different textures and without the iconic underground airport.




An early draft of Megafloat with a slightly different modeling.




In Ace Combat 2, I found the unused prototype of an aircraft:




… there’s much more; take a look at my Ace Combat page if you’re interested.

I’ve also had a look at the PSX Driver games. Here’s a part of Driver 2’s Chicago (I have a dedicated page for that as well):




I originally started doing this in 2011, when I was trying to mod DID’s Total Air War (the PC flight simulation from the 90s). There was so much great stuff hidden inside it, and it has since grown into the hobby project of my own flight simulator.

Extracting the games gave me so much insight into the development process … tieing unused assets to specific press releases; learning about the developer’s struggle to find their game’s own style; changing premises months before release. Driver and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. were great in this aspect; you could fill books with all their leaks and beta versions.

Why I’m here? Love for the never-before-seen; for betas and bootlegs; for the trivia that every true fan of a franchise needs to know from heart. Maybe one day find unreleased versions of my favorite games with even wilder stuff hidden in them!

Thank you for having me here