Found by chance at a flea market in Scotland, this Xbox 360 allowed a player to get their hands on a beta version of GTA 4 that belonged to Rockstar Games.
For gamers and collectors, flea markets are often an opportunity to get your hands on real treasures at bargain prices. Or in any case, at a much more reasonable price than in certain specialized stores. And in some cases, this can even give rise to even more unexpected surprises. As proof, for the modest sum of around £5 (a little less than €6), a Scottish player named Jan managed to get his hands on a very special Xbox 360. For what ? It is in fact a console that served as a development kit… for the creators of GTA 4.
A player buys a GTA 4 dev kit at a ridiculous price
Yes, in exchange for a simple ticket, this player, who ironically claims not to consider himself a big fan of Rockstar’s work with Kotaku, managed to get his hands on a treasure that many would dream of. Especially since the surprise doesn’t stop there. As soon as he got home, Jan quickly plugged in the console, which was still functional, and then discovered the pot-aux-roses: it still contained a beta version of GTA 4 dating from November 23, 2007, approximately five months before the official release of the game.
In total, more than 118 GB of new data were discovered in the Xbox 360, data that Jan did not hesitate to share with numerous modders to see what they could do with it. The opportunity then, for the latter, to bring to light numerous elements deleted from GTA 4 by Rockstar ahead of its release, and to share them with all fans on the web. Additional weapons, unused objects, preliminary versions of certain characters and vehicles, new discoveries flood the web.
Among the most interesting, in particular, are the aborted attempt to make the ferry a means of transport in GTA 4 like the metro; or even the presence of a mini-game with zombies which, according to a former Rockstar employee, would have quickly been put aside during the development of the game. And that’s without counting, for the most passionate fans, behind the scenes of certain cutscenes, which we can discover from another angle and which can even appear in the game files even though they are absent from the final version.
Modders are having a field day
In short, suffice to say that for fans of GTA 4, this discovery certainly represents a real gold mine. And it’s obvious that modders are already hard at work restoring as much content as possible from this beta version, which should allow the PC community to enjoy some of these elements in the more or less near future. Enough to wait as you should while waiting for the release of a potential remaster of GTA 4, mentioned by certain rumors last year? We continue to cross our fingers.
Source : My city, GTA Forums
