An unfinished Japanese PS1 game, released two decades later

In 1998 a small team of Japanese developers spent eight months working on a game called Magic Castle, which they handed out as a park to seven major publishers, including Sony. It never went anywhere, but thanks to the emulators and efforts of one of the original team, we can now play and enjoy it anyway.

One of the team members, PIROWO, recently discovered the source code of the project—created on Net Yaroze– and decided to tie up the loose ends and release them to the public. This game looks cool as hell, not only for its isometric style, but for several times very modern as a customizable UI and dynamic music.

This video from the VHS created by the team is back in ‘98 to join their pitch, which Sony loved, but then blew it up by asking the developers to let them go. Magic Castle and work on something else, which they were not at all fond of doing.

For more behind the scenes, Net Yaroze Europe interview two of the original developers where they talk about stuff like how they got close to making the game with “another company that makes famous Japanese RPGs”, but then sin it also fell apart.

You can download the game here.