A Daredevil game for the PS2 cancelled close to completion and never released, has found its way online.
The game, called Daredevil: The Man Without Fear, was based on the 1993 comic series of the same name by Sin City creator Frank Miller. Daredevil was a third-person beat-em-up, developed by the now-defunct 5,000 Ft. Studios. An anonymous party uploaded a ‘late prototype’ build to the Hidden Palace wiki, claiming to have been a developer on the game. The build date attached is March 22. 2004, and it appears the game was in development for the PS2, Xbox, and PC at the time of its cancellation.
The anonymous uploader’s notes assert that the game’s cancellation was the result of Marvel refusing to approve a number of changes recommended by Sony. According to the uploader, who, again, claims to have worked on the game, Sony’s recommendations made significant alterations to the concepts 5,000 Ft Studios had originally pitched to Marvel, and the comics giant balked.
The upload was accompanied by YouTube footage of the game, and a dump of screenshots depicting gameplay.
The uploader’s notes also include a few bug logs. These include crash warnings, framerate floating point counters, and glitches that cause the player to get stuck in walls. This is a ‘late prototype’ build, after all, and was ultimately incomplete at the time of its cancellation. The game also reportedly needed a little extra development before the uploader’s build could be played. That work fell to another anonymous user called SolidSnake11, without whom defects in the original build’s mastering would have rendered it unplayable.
Anyway, if you’d like to play it, you can download the build here, and run it with a PS2 emulator of your choice. I’d recommend grabbing it now. I’m sure the Disney lawyers are already trying to get it scrubbed off the internet.
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