Earlier today, preservationists released a playable prototype of a Sega-developed game canceled in 1997: The Sacred Pools.
It was a full-motion video adventure game slated for the Saturn that was heavily advertised as being an edgy title full of mature content. Infamously, Sega threw a lavish party at E3 1996 to promote The Sacred Pools but failed to leave a good impression with the press.
Preservationist group Gaming Alexandria announced the release via their website in an article that goes into great detail on the game’s history.
The group released an alpha build of Sacred Pools for not only the Saturn but also PC, Macintosh and PlayStation. You can download them all from this Archive.org page they set up.
Some may wonder why a PlayStation version existed at all, considering this is a game developed by Sony’s video game rival at the time, Sega. It was being produced by Sega’s semi-autonomous subsidiary SegaSoft, which aimed to sell multiplatform games, including for the PlayStation. However, it only ever released titles for the Saturn and PC.
Other Saturn games produced by SegaSoft include Bug Too, Three Dirty Dwarves, Scud: The Disposable Assassin and fan-favorite Mr. Bones — all of which did hit store shelves, unlike The Sacred Pools.
Shiro wrote extensively about The Sacred Pools’ history last year.
Leading up to release, the game was marketed as being an erotic adventure, rumored to feature sex and nudity.
But with the prototype released, that appears to have been bluster — plenty of women in the game wear racy costumes, but there’s nothing that would make the likes of red-label Saturn games like The Yakyuuken Special blush.
Shiro’s own SaturnDave livestreamed the Saturn build earlier this evening and found its game design confusing — little is explained as the player explores a city built into an asteroid filled with mysterious women who lend help and crazed bandits who dish out some damage before running off.
In their article, Gaming Alexandria said they got the alpha builds from David Gray, an associate producer for The Sacred Pools at SegaSoft.
“The discs were given to Gray as a parting gift in 1999 during the final days of SegaSoft which contained alpha builds for the Sega Saturn, Windows, Macintosh, and PlayStation. In his possession for over 20 years, all discs were thankfully still intact and were easily ripped using ImgBurn.”
— Gaming Alexandria
The three-disc game was directed by James Riley, who also directed two other FMV games — the infamous Night Trap as well as Surgical Strike, both released for the Sega CD and Sega 32X.
Surgical Strike was developed by The Code Monkeys, the same team that worked on The Sacred Pools.
Gaming Alexandria teased this prototype release more than two weeks ago without revealing that it was The Sacred Pools, only calling it “a big one” while tweeting a Saturn logo.
This is just the second time Gaming Alexandria has released a Saturn prototype. The first one was Rebel Strike, a pre-alpha build made by Sega of America early in the Saturn’s life. That prototype was released in August 2019 along with a gallery of design documents and concept art.
Gaming Alexandria calls itself a group of game preservationists that post scans and dumps of prototypes before they are lost. The site originally focused on high-resolution scans when it started in 2015 but has expanded thanks to the efforts of others joining up with their talents.
[Edit — Nov. 1] Hours after The Sacred Pools was uploaded to the Internet, Blueskyrunner pointed out in the Shiro Discord server that the game has a striking resemblance to a Saturn prototype that’s been publicly available for nearly 20 years.
That prototype had been called Rebellion, dumped and distributed on burned discs at a San Jose, Calif., retro gaming convention in 2004.
Here’s the comparison Blueskyrunner made last night between a gameplay video of Rebellion by Retro Pals five years ago, on the left, and SaturnDave’s livestream of Sacred Pools earlier that evening, on the right:
While Sacred Pools’ opening CGI sequence is missing in Rebellion, the FMV gameplay is nearly identical. Considering Rebellion is only one disc while Sacred Pools takes up three, it’s likely that it’s an even earlier prototype of Sacred Pools.
Retro Dad and Modern Lad may have been the first person on the Internet to notice the connection in his YouTube video posted a few hours before:
Practically nothing had been known about Rebellion in the nearly 20 years it’s circulated — the original unlicensed release merely called it “an interesting title,” comparing it to Wing Commander’s outside-the-cockpit elements. It’s unclear how the group, OlderGames.com, acquired it.
The Rebellion prototype still can be downloaded from Hidden Palace.
[Edit — Nov. 2] Tuesday evening brought yet another revelation — the “Mac” version of Sacred Pools is actually another Saturn version. What’s more, it’s a newer build than the other Saturn prototype in the release.
Upon testing the Mac version, a homebrew developer named VBT on the SegaXtreme Discord server found that it was actually a raw disc image of Saturn code.
TrekkiesUnite explained on the Shiro Discord that a raw disc image is “a format that developers would make to send to Sega to have the [security] ring added and then sent to the pressing plant.” On its own, the code can’t be run on a stock Saturn console.
So after that discovery, VBT used old developer tools to convert the raw image into a format that can be run on a regular Saturn. He hosted three zipped files of the converted version on his website that can be downloaded from these links:
http://vberthelot.free.fr/sacredpool/vcdemu_sacred_pool.7z.001
http://vberthelot.free.fr/sacredpool/vcdemu_sacred_pool.7z.002
http://vberthelot.free.fr/sacredpool/vcdemu_sacred_pool.7z.003
Make sure to download all three zip files into the same directory, then open the first one with 7zip and it’ll use all three files to extract the three discs. It should leave you with six files like these:
When opening the prototype originally identified as the Saturn version in CDmage, a tool for browsing the files on a CD, the latest modified date for any of the files is May 29, 1997.
When opening the Saturn raw disc image that was originally identified as a Mac version in CDmage, the latest modified date for the files is July 25, 1997, meaning it’s two months older.
It’s unclear how many changes were made between those two builds, but one that immediately jumps out is a change of font used in the character profiles accessed via a terminal in the game.
The newer build also lacks a jingle when discovering items that’s found in the older prototype.
One important detail players have discovered is that both Saturn versions of Sacred Pools use direct mode for their control input detection, meaning a 3D analog controller won’t work, even when set to digital mode. Players must use a regular gamepad to control Sacred Pools.
It’s the same issue that Meduza Team ran into with their English localization patch for Ogre Battle — they added a difficulty selection screen to the game on startup that used direct input polling, which prevented 3D controller usage until a patch was issued with a workaround.
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