Finished the 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 sent as a presentation to seven major publishers, including Sony. It never went anywhere, but thanks to the emulators and the efforts of one of the original teams, we can now play it and enjoy it anyway.

One of the team members, PIROWO, recently found the source code for the project—created in Net Yaroze“And he decided to tie the loose ends and release it to the public.” This game looks great, not only for its isometric style, but for several very modern touches, such as a customizable user interface and dynamic music.

This video comes from a VHS that the team first created in ‘98 to accompany its release, which Sony loved, but also flew asking developers to abandon Magic Castle and go to work on something else, which they didn’t really like to do.

For more information on the background of the game, Net Yaroze Europa have an interview with two of the original developers where they talk about things like how they came close to making the game with another “company that produces famous Japanese role-playing games,” but then that it collapsed as well.

You can download the game here.