Rare’s Forgotten Pre-Banjo-Kazooie Project Surfaces Online

A ROM of the canceled Super Nintendo Entertainment System RPG Project Dream by Rare has leaked online, with its materials later used partially to create Banjo-Kazooie.

Years of rumors preceded the release of Banjo-Kazooie regarding an unreleased game called Project Dream. Now, its files have appeared online.

Project Dream served as the working title for a project planned for release as Dream: Land of Giants. The release never happened, and Rare later used a significant portion of the work when creating Banjo-Kazooie.

The canceled SNES role-playing game appears to have survived on the hard drive of a Rare employee. An anonymous user published the Project Dream ROM, allowing the unfinished game to run via an emulator.

The leak author urged other owners of unreleased games to do the same. They also suggested boycotting Sony and Microsoft, switching to Linux, and buying physical copies of games.