The original game from Free Radical Design has surfaced in an online store, and someone was quick to snap it up.

The demo of TimeSplitters 4 dates back to 2008 and was saved when someone stumbled upon it on a PlayStation 3 devkit (hardware development kit). On Reddit, Filmsy-Zebra3775 asked the eBay seller about it, without telling us what a treasure the hardware was. It turns out that a friend of the seller worked at Free Radical until November 2008. The studio was originally closed in December 2008 (then reopened by the Embracer Group a few years ago, but closed again at the end of last year).

He wrote that he would start the game over the weekend to see what it was, and then send a video of it. If it’s something new, he’ll buy it, and if it helps anyone, he’ll upload it to the PlayStation 3 devkit. The seller was able to boot into the game and it turns out to be a demo of the 2008 version of TimeSplitters 4! Filmsy-Zebra3775 paid 525 GBP for it and then immediately posted the prototype on Hidden Palace, claiming it was a way to preserve history.

Commenters on the Reddit thread were all happy to see the prototype (which can now be downloaded from Hidden Palace) saved, and preserving games should always be important. But the story has also caught the attention of former Free Radical employees! David Doak, the studio’s founder and director, said that this is exactly the kind of nonsense that no publisher would want in 2008. However, one of the videos shows a fight against sticks in a gothic castle with futuristic but scary music.

Free Radical created TimeSplitters 4 in 2008 with a bizarre twist. It featured quirky character design, a large online multiplayer element, and characters with elemental effects, but when the studio failed with Haze, which launched as a multiplatform but became a PS3 exclusive, the door was closed in December 2008 and Crytek took over many people. A former Free Radical Design developer also showed footage of the TimeSplitters 2 remaster last July, before Embracer shut it down.

Source: PCGamer, Hidden Palace