Goldeneye successor unofficially unlocked as free bonus inside another game

2021 has been a bountiful yr for a choose group of retro console avid gamers—particularly, followers of Goldeneye 007. Earlier this yr, we found and confirmed a leak of the N64 classic as secretly remade for Xbox 360 consoles (it is even playable on each actual {hardware} and emulators). Today, the identical factor applies to a unique game from a few of Goldeneye 007‘s unique creators: TimeSplitters 2.

The story started with an offhand touch upon Twitter this weekend from British programmer Matt Phillips, who had labored on the 2016 video game Homefront: The Revolution. As a nod to the Easter vacation, Phillips piled onto a Twitter thread about long-lost Easter eggs inside of video video games, and his was a doozy: He had put a “totally playable, native 4K port of TimeSplitters 2” right into a five-year-old game with out anyone realizing it.

If you have performed H:TR, you could have seen a TS2-branded arcade cupboard towards the tip of the game. Walk as much as it and activate it, and that 2002 game will boot up, albeit in bite-sized type. Only its first two ranges are playable, and solely in single-player mode. But as it seems, Phillips put a lot of the older game’s native content material into that cupboard, all locked away with some debug codes.

Hilariously, he has since misplaced these codes. “I haven’t got the pocket book with it in any extra,” Phillips wrote. “I as soon as gave it to a good friend to leak in some Discord channel, they usually referred to as him a liar and banned his account.”

Returning to monkey enterprise

Once the story broke, followers started reverse-engineering the game’s numerous ports to see what they may discover. A number of of us individually discovered a collection of 5 debug/unlock codes that work throughout all H:TR platforms. They all require a gamepad (even on PC), they usually all have to be entered inside the TimeSplitters 2 menu inside of H:TR.

But positive sufficient, the codes unlock nearly the whole lot of TimeSplitters 2—and make it natively playable for the primary time ever on PC, Xbox One, and PS4.

Once the codes are entered, TS2‘s restricted menu choice grows so as to add the whole lot of the single-player game, the total “arcade” deathmatch mode, and a collection of single-player challenges. On console, you will need to speedrun the game to achieve the arcade cupboard in query, which then unlocks TS2 as a handy menu choice everytime you reboot the game. PC gamers can extra simply obtain a “100%” save file to do the identical. Either manner, you will need to re-enter the TS2 debug codes each time you need to entry them.

I’ve confirmed that the debug codes work on the PC model, they usually’ve let me leap into marketing campaign, arcade, and problem content material. While all property and content material are the identical as the game’s unique PlayStation 2 and Xbox (OG) variations, every thing scales as much as native decision, and due to Phillips’ feedback, we consider this scales to as a lot as 4K on the final console era’s “professional” fashions. Unfortunately, this walled-off content material is stuffed with bugs on PC (unsurprising, on condition that they had been hidden as an unofficial bonus), so I’ve seen every thing from jarbled textual content menus to full-stop game crashes. One of in the present day’s newly found codes freezes the PC model after displaying a collection of “cheat” unlock confirmations, as effectively.

Having stated that, I think about the game’s PS4 and Xbox One variations are extra secure, contemplating they needed to be ported for locked-down ecosystems—although I wonder if writer THQ Nordic will reply to this information by issuing a patch to take away it. (Or possibly they will go the other way and supply a flash sale on the game’s digital variations, which presently value $20.) Either manner, we would a lot favor THQ Nordic, who owns the rights to the TimeSplitters collection, hurry up and launch a TimeSplitters anniversary assortment of remastered video games for contemporary platforms. This buggy, code-dependent resolution pales compared to letting us immediately purchase the critically acclaimed likes of TS2 and TimeSplitters: Future Perfect.

I say this particularly as a result of all of this content material is presently locked to solo play, and like GE007 earlier than it, TimeSplitters video games are a lot better with buddies, whether or not in split-screen or on-line. Before the debug codes had been discovered, Phillips teased a manner for this TS2 port to let followers recreate its epic multiplayer content material: “I ported the community stack to trip on prime of H:TR‘s co-op mode. If, and that is an enormous if, anybody was in a position to hack two or extra arcades into one of many co-op maps, it will boot to the multiplayer menu.” Sounds like you will have extra work forward of you, enterprising TimeSplitters followers.