A late build of the canceled 2004 Daredevil video game has finally appeared online thanks to a group of game preservationists and a former developer.
Hidden Palace, an organization of online video game preservationists, posted a video of the game on YouTube showcasing over a dozen minutes of gameplay in a mostly-finished prototype. The video highlights some of the game’s story elements and gameplay, which consists of a series of linear levels pitting players against various street thugs and other enemy types using martial arts and Daredevil’s radar sense as a special ability.
Originally in development from the now-defunct 5,000 Ft. Studios, Daredevil: The Man Without Fear (originally called Daredevil: The Video Game) was a planned 2004 action-adventure title based on the Marvel comic book character of the same name. However, after a slew of development issues and increasingly difficult demands on the part of Sony, Marvel canceled the game late in its development, leaving a mostly finished product behind, never to be officially released.
However, a former developer of the game, who has chosen to remain anonymous, worked with Hidden Palace to dump the game’s files from a disc containing a build of the unreleased product onto the internet. From there, a fan took on the task of fixing the build’s many bugs and performance issues to turn it into a mostly playable experience before Hidden Palace recorded and uploaded footage of the game to YouTube.
Adapted from Frank Miller‘s work on the Daredevil comic book series, The Man Without Fear saw Matt Murdock take a stand against organized crime after the Kingpin, Wilson Fisk, is reportedly assassinated, leaving a power vacuum in New York City’s criminal underworld. Players would have controlled the titular superhero in several linear missions based on locations from the Marvel comic books and run into some familiar faces, such as Matt Murdock’s doomed lover and trained assassin Elektra.
Allegedly, the game began development as an extremely low-budget title with much simpler gameplay and controls, but the announcement of the 2003 Daredevil film led Marvel to increase the game’s budget to make it into a more full-fledged cross-platform title. Unfortunately for fans of the blind vigilante, the game was riddled with development setbacks and demands from publishers, leading Marvel to ultimately abandon the project despite making significant progress on the title.
Currently, a playable build does exist, though Hidden Palace is the only source for footage of the game as of this writing. However, it cannot release the game officially due to technical limitations and issues with copyright infringement.
Source: YouTube
