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The Hidden Palace is a community dedicated to the preservation of video game development media (such as prototypes, hardware, source code, artwork, and more). This website can be utilized as a catalog for the items that we and others are able to collect and share.

If you are interested in contributing, please see our How to Contribute page.

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Feb 1, 2026: The Dead Are Rising
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Dec 25, 2025: One Bad Ass Hedgehog - Shadow the Hedgehog
Nov 26, 2025: A Mojave Thanksgiving - Fallout: New Vegas Prototype
Oct 31, 2025: Happy Halloween 2025! Dark Empires Prototype & Craig Stitt Interview
Jun 29, 2025: Animaniacs - Hollywood Hypnotics
Feb 1, 2025: Frogger 2 Full Development Archive
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Jan 21, 2024: Crash Bash and Spyro 3
Jan 1, 2024: New Years 2024 - Sonic Heroes
Dec 25, 2023: A Very Bandicoot Christmas - Crash Bandicoot: Warped Prototype
Nov 24, 2023: 6GUN: BattleBourne's Unreleased PlayStation 2 Game
Oct 31, 2023: Daredevil: The Man Without Fear - Unreleased PlayStation 2 Game
Feb 28, 2023: Phantasy Star Online Prototype
Feb 15, 2023: PSP Release Candidates
Dec 25, 2022: Project Deluge: Xbox 360 and Wii
Dec 9, 2022: Semradical!
Nov 24, 2022: Sega Technical Institute’s Cancelled Segapede
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Today, long time contributor MrPinball64 and Ventura are launching Games' Past. For their first release, Games' Past proudly presents...

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Fallout: New Vegas (Jul 21, 2010 prototype)      Fallout: New Vegas (Aug 22, 2010 prototype)

Obsidian Entertainment was founded in 2003 by former employees of Black Isle Studios, the developers of the original Fallout series, before their closure in late 2003. Their first project, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2, was developed in just 16 months, and Obsidian felt the game was unfinished at release, despite receiving very positive reviews. They felt that they should have cut more from the game and better defined their project scope, so they could focus on certain aspects of the game without detracting from others. This project became a valuable lesson for Obsidian, and just 4 years later, in early 2009, they were approached by Bethesda to create a Fallout game, giving them the chance to use everything they had learned from Star Wars.

Obsidian was given 18 months to develop Fallout: New Vegas — an incredibly short time to create such a large game. Bethesda wanted to ensure that the game was adequately spaced out from the then-upcoming release of Skyrim, giving each game a year apart and giving Fallout: New Vegas time to shine, with its final DLC, Lonesome Road, being released just two months before Skyrim.

With such a short amount of time to develop the game, it was inevitable that Obsidian would have to cut content from the game. These decisions to remove content from the game were due to both time constraints and hardware limitations. A major companion, Ulysses, was cut only 2 months before the game was finalized, because his inclusion took up too much space and the team ran out of time to fully realize him as intended. He was re-purposed for the final DLC, Lonesome Road. Much of the post-game content was cut from the game, along with many quests, side-characters, and other features, ultimately removed from the final release. While there were many reasons for this, the most pertinent was simply a lack of time and a reluctance to repeat the mistakes they made during Star Wars.

Despite Fallout: New Vegas having so much cut content, much of which is still present in the game's files to some degree, many questions remain unanswered. Turning 15 years old only last month, it seemed as if many of those questions would continue to go unanswered, as only a handful of pre-release screenshots, videos, and developer interviews have surfaced over the years. As the game continues to age, the odds of finding further development material or playable builds grow slimmer and slimmer with every passing day.

That is, until today. Two development kits from Obsidian Entertainment were discovered at a small mom-and-pop game store in Utah, containing a beta version of Fallout: New Vegas from July 21, 2010, just over a month before the game went gold and just under three months before the final release. Even so close to the final version of the game, there are mountains of cut content — both previously known and now seen in context — and completely undocumented and unknown content being seen for the first time since it was removed from the game over 15 years ago.

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This build of Fallout: New Vegas represents a point in development at which Obsidian began removing content from the game, primarily for optimization. This build represents a midpoint at which some of these crucial changes had already been implemented, while others had not. For example, only a month before E3 2010, gameplay showcased the Strip without any walls dividing it up into three parts, but by the time of this build, the walls had already been erected. Yet, there are noticeably more NPCs, Securitrons, and props visible everywhere across the strip, which were further toned down for the game's final release. According to Josh Sawyer, they had not yet begun console testing, and once they started testing on consoles, they realized very quickly that things would have to be cut to meet the required performance, which meant cutting content across all platforms.

Nearly every major location in the game has a change - some more major than others, but at every single corner in the game, there is something to be found. Changed buildings, removed props, added props, new signs, entirely removed NPCs - there’s a little something to be found everywhere, ranging from cut quests, cut locations, temporary voice lines, unfinished voice lines - all just a single month before the game was finalized, which really speaks to how short an 18-month development cycle really is. Unfortunately, this was the only fully playable version of the game, and it would truly be amazing if we could even get a glimpse of what came before it.

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Thankfully… We can, and not all hope is lost of uncovering an even earlier point in development. Thanks to Fallout: New Vegas's bugginess, which persisted throughout active development, there are 50 memory dumps containing textures, models, audio, and dialogue. Ranging from December 3, 2009, to April 21, 2010, these crash dumps give us an unprecedented look at an early point in the game’s development. While they are by no means complete and cannot be “played” right out of the box, they are still an invaluable look into the game's development. From the 50 memory dumps, over 500 files were able to be recovered ranging from models, textures, dialogue, and audio, all ranging from December 2009 to April 2010. In addition, a handful of early save files were able to be recovered, and we were able to extract the thumbnails from the saves, which gives us a few early screenshots and a good look at the very early development for the game! Not only that, but a partial build dating from April 17, 2010, was recovered. This partial build includes the game’s executable, a matching PDB, all voice lines and music, the videos, and about 1/5 of the textures. Unfortunately, the remaining 4/5 of the textures, as well as the meshes, are overwritten. However, it still provides a lot of never-before-seen content, most of which is hopefully moddable into the final game.

It took 15 years for Fallout: New Vegas to have its first beta build released to the internet. Over the many years since it was released, fans have found much of the content present in this build unused in the game, interpreted it, and added it back in their own ways. Finally, for the first time since it was cut from the game 15 years ago, it can be seen exactly as the developers intended. This is only the beginning - we can’t wait to see what fans will dig out of these builds, what unused files they’ll find, what mods they’ll create with everything presented here.

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A special thanks to Ventura for covering the build in video form, MrPinball64 for research and data recovery, and Kuriatsu for locating the development kits, sitting on a shelf in a game store in Utah, their secrets waiting to be uncovered.

Have a very happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

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