February 23, 2008 Proto Release
From Sonic Retro
On February 23rd, 2008 at 6PM EST drx released over 1,000 various Sega and third party prototypes for several consoles. To build suspension to the event an announcement was posted across various websites and forums and a special IRC channel was opened on Sonic Cult's website called #sonicprotos (this was later renamed #protos). An hour before the release, a special community Skypecast was broadcast live over shoutcast. It was supposed to end shortly after the release, but ended up continuing for the remainder of the day. Recordings of the pre-release and post-release segments of the show are available for download here and here, respectively.
Most of the protos came from one place, they were obtained from Sega of America's QA archives from 1994-1995. The archives were taken from Sega's QA BBS (BBS is similar to todays FTP's) and eventually backed up onto the cd's pictured. The files all had passwords which needed to be cracked before being extracted. The price of these prototypes weren't disclosed but it was stated the cost is in the five digit number range. --!>The price was about $15,000