A playable version of Capcom's scrapped second Resident Evil game, dubbed by fans as Resident Evil 1.5, has been released online.
Fans have been working on restoring and translating the never-released title after getting their hands on its unfinished code.
Capcom cancelled Resident Evil 1.5 after about a year's development, dissatisfied with its progress. The developer started again on a new version of Resident Evil 2 - the one that eventually saw release.
The Resi 1.5 fan project has been building a playable version of the scrapped game since last year - fixing Capcom's own bugs and adding in new features.
But the download available now is a rough, in-progress version. The project had intended to only release a final build, but a leak of their work by one profiteering individual forced their hand.
After hearing that a build was being offered for sale to other Resi fans - and placed on eBay, before the listing was removed - project leaders decided to simply publish it online for anyone to download.
"This here is an ISO of our work-in-progress build of the Resident Evil 1.5 restoration project. It is not representative of the current state of development of the non-profit restoration fan-project," project leader MrBZork wrote (thanks, Kotaku).
"People attempting to profit on our non-profit efforts, and both our personal and monitary investments is something we cannot stand for and is something we feel greatly taints the Resident Evil community, the prototype community, the archival and preservation of video game history, the integrity and face value of people, and our goal and intentions for this here restoration project.
"While we cannot speak on behalf of Capcom, we do believe that charging money for illegal and unsanctioned duplication of their data is something that should be frowned upon and avoided at all costs."
