[Exclusive Information] Grand Theft Auto PSP LCS Prototype Disc Found (Patreon)

Have you ever dreamed to play beta GTA build? Yeah, me too! Someone got a holy grail recently and here is a story. 

In January 2018 one dude made "Grand Theft Auto PSP Prototype (May 2005 - Likely Liberty City Stories)" thread asking people to help him to evaluate his disc. 

As you can see, this pre-production UMD has an interesting title "GTA English" with Take 2 INT name on it.

The owner of this UMD disc said:

It's dated six months before Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories came out, so that's my guess as to what this is a fairly unfinished build of.  

Everyone was amazed to see R* beta asset in the wild. Everyone asked him take a small footage playing this UMD disc. He responded:

I've booted the UMD on a PSP with CFW. The UMD does not boot to playable code as it appears to have some kind of security protection. 

Yeah, that was a problem, it had a protection. I guess, Rockstar Games or Rockstar Leeds were not dumb and decided to prevent a leak at least by using weird protection. The owner added:

The contents have been dumped though and it's undoubtedly GTA Liberty  City Stories. Here's a link to video of the UMD booting up: 

https://streamable.com/g53og

 Note that the triangle only stops spinning when the Select button is pressed. All other inputs have no other effect. 

So yeah, when he boots the game, he sees a triangle. If he presses select, it stops spinning. I guess, there was a key combo to bypass this "protection"... Honestly, I have never seen such protection in action.

But anyways, as you can see, the game had placeholder icons and background.

He also shared UMD's file structure, including directories and file sizes: 

https://pastebin.com/D86UANCW

By looking at the structure there is no doubt to say that the game

had no cutscene audio

had only GTA 3 radio station.

had no "news" audio files

used Vice City "data" structure. Everything is stored in DTZ file in the final game.

Had less files

Then the owner said:

I've just been looking through the ENGLISH.GXT file and it's got all the mission text, dialogue etc. in there.

If there are any particular files worth exploring that I can post some samples from which might be of interest to the community, please let me know. It's possible that the code expects a security key on a memory  stick to run straight off, but I'm assuming these files can still be investigated etc. now the contents have been dumped.  

As you can see, he offered to share some files so we could investigate them, but it never happened...

Do you know why? 

My friend....let's say an "x" friend... had three friends, who decided to offer a very good price and get this UMD disc in their hand. Very shortly they made a deal.

As soon as they made a deal, the owner went quite as well as those three fellas who bought the UMD. No one has heard anything about this disc since then. :(

Originally, my friend had a deal with those three friends. They would allow him to play the game and film some footage.. Unfortunately, they went quite and ignored him after.

Just think about it, people started to talk about this UMD after 10 years and then it disappeared again.  So yeah, the community haven't received anything from it. Someone just bought it and that's it.  

Remember when the original owner said that it had a protection? 

Guess what, the game is written in LUA language and there was an interesting file by the name of " STARTUP.LUA". These 3 fellas thought that they could crack it.

But anyways, I hope one day someone will start to talk about it gain.Source:

https://assemblergames.com/threads/grand-theft-auto-psp-prototype-may-2005-likely-liberty-city-stories.68086/