We Recovered Lost FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS Prototypes

Hello, this is Ventura with Games Past, and today we're bringing you a very special video on something that will change the Fallout New Vegas community forever.

In early October 2025, we were reached out to by friend of the channel, Kiriatsu, asking if we would be interested in buying a few Xbox 360 development consoles from a game store in Utah.

These development kits have been sitting on that store's shelves for nearly an entire year, so we were able to negotiate the price down to something we were happy with, and we bought all three death kits.

One of the kits was from Atlas USA, and contained prototypes for several Xbox Live arcade games that we're still recovering and will release in the near future.

The other two kits were from Obsidian Entertainment, and upon seeing their contents, we dropped everything and got to work right away, recovering everything from the hard drives that we could.

After hundreds of hours and weeks of work by our co-founder, MrPinball64, we are proud to showcase for the first time ever a beta of Fallout New Vegas and its mountains of cut content.

Real shame you got caught up in this, kid.

Must seem like bad luck.

Truth is, the game was rigged from the start.

Let's start with the bulk of the recovered content, the prototype builds.

We've managed to recover two working prototypes.

The first build is dated July 21st, 2010, which is one month and one day before the game was finalized.

The second build is dated August 22nd, 2010, the same date as the final build but with all debugging features enabled.

Even though the July build is only one month before the game was finalized,

It is filled to the brim with changes and cut content.

This prototype version of the game is 6GB in size, 2GB more than the final version.

Almost every file the game uses is larger than the retail game.

There are more textures, more models, and most of all, tons of temporary and cut audio present in this build than in retail.

Here's a quick showcase of a few popular locations, comparing the July build to the final game.

Thank you.

has changed locations, but also cut locations, cut NPCs, voice lines, textures, and tons more that are yet to be discovered.

As for cut NPCs, here's an interaction that was cut from the game but present in the July build that happens as soon as you exit the town of Goodsprings and start heading towards Prim.

Peace, traveler.

Sign says you go south.

Just look for the roller coaster.

Oh, and don't go north.

A caravan just got sacked up the road.

It just gets worse the further north you go.

Deathclaws.

Death in general.

But it's your ass, I suppose.

Just a hunter out here killing things and hoping their hides fetch more than the bullets cost to kill them.

That's a dangerous question.

Ask the way a bandit might ask.

But since we're close to town, I'll trust your good intentions.

Watch your back out there.

There are also unfinished interactions and changed dialogue, including the introduction of a fan-favorite character, Oliver Swannick.

Forget that place.

That place is... Nipton is... Just forget it, alright?

Yeah, smell that air.

Smell it.

Ain't that fine?

Are you kidding me?

Never felt better.

That?

That was a million years ago.

Ha ha ha.

But not no more.

Powder gang is small time, man.

I'm a winner.

I won the motherfucking lottery.

Bye.

And of course, what would be a good prototype without some of that good old-fashioned text-to-speech?

Hey, where the do you think you're going?

Prim is off-limits.

Some convicts from the prison up the road have taken over the town.

Everyone inside is either dead or in hiding.

What's more, there are two tribes of raiders causing trouble in this area as well.

You'd be safer heading back up to Good Springs.

Playing through this prototype version of the game is basically a whole new experience and is worth playing through if you have a modded Xbox 360 or a development kit.

What you've seen so far is barely scratching the surface of this prototype's build secrets, and we're so excited to see what you all can find on your playthroughs of this early version of New Vegas.

For those who plan on using Xenia, the Xbox 360 emulator, it is worth noting that while the game is playable, many graphical glitches are present and it won't be the same experience as if you were on an actual Xbox 360.

So, for the sake of this video, all gameplay was recorded on an Xbox 360 Slim development kit.

Unlike the July build, the August build is almost 100% identical to the retail version of the game.

It contains no significant differences other than having the console command enabled, which is usually disabled on console versions of the game.

One of the hard drives contained leftover files from an even earlier build, dated April 17th, 2010.

But, unfortunately, we were unable to make it playable because a large portion of the data had been overwritten, including all of the meshes and 80% of the textures.

We recovered everything left to recover from this prototype build, and you'll be able to comb through everything we were able to save.

Outside of the prototype builds, we also recovered and dissected over 50 crash dumps, most of which contain textures, scripts, and even models dating all the way back to December 2009.

We've gone through and sorted them by the build dates the crash dumps are for, making them easily accessible for dissecting and finding anything that might be useful.

Lastly, all three builds came with intact PDBs, which have never been leaked before for any version of Fallout New Vegas, or for any game before Fallout 4 for that matter.

For those who aren't aware, the PDB file is an extremely important file to modders as it is a file generated while the game is being built that contains much additional debugging information, which is incredibly useful for reverse engineering the game and understanding not only how the game functions, but the engine behind it as well.

As the console version of the game has not seen many mods, we hope that the release of these debugging symbols will assist modders in modding the game in a way never before possible.

We dedicate this release to the original 65-person team at Obsidian Entertainment that crafted this iconic game.

and to the passionate community that has documented, modded, and breathed new life into the game for the past 15 years.

These files are now in your hands to play with, create, and hopefully restore content to make New Vegas closer to what the developers originally intended for the game.

Everything we are releasing today is only one of the two hard drives.

We tried our best to get everything out to you today, but unlike Obsidian Entertainment, we can't handle crunch all that well.

The second drive contains a build of all four DLCs for the game from February 15, 2011, over seven months before the final release of Lonesome Road.

While the first two DLCs, Dead Money and Honest Hearts, are either final or very close to final, Old World Blues and Lonesome Road are still very early in development and contains mountains of changes and cut content.

We cannot wait to share it all with you in the coming weeks.

Thank you so much for watching, and please enjoy your time in the Beta Mojave Desert.

We'll be seeing you soon for the Nuclear Winter.

Howdy, partner.

Fine evening, Amy.

Friend, you look like you could use a sarsaparilla.