If you're old enough to vividly recall the Game Boy Color era then you may well remember an RPG for the system by the name of Infinity. Developed by Affinix Software, the title began life as Joltima II and was supposed to be published by Crave Entertainment in 2001 - the publisher even demoed the title at E3 that year.

However, the following year the game was dropped by Crave due the shrinking nature of the Game Boy Color market and the studio was forced to close its doors at the same time. The staff involved each went their separate ways and production was halted entirely.

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That might have ordinarily resulted in the death of the project, but against all odds the Infinity ROM has finally been released in a playable state:

Today we are pleased to announce the release of Infinity for Game Boy Color in unfinished form! We've made a ROM file available, as well as the source code. The game is in mostly the same state as it was when we stopped developing it in 2001, but with some recent polishing (bugfixes, missing assets added, typos corrected, etc). The ROM is configured to end about a quarter of the way through, before you encounter any incomplete areas, and thus we've labeled it as a preview.

The Infinity ROM file can be played in a Game Boy Color emulator. We recommend RetroArch or OpenEmu with the Gambatte core. The game can also be burned onto a cartridge if you have the equipment.

We advise against modifying the source code to play beyond the stopping point unless you are interested in participating in the development process. The stopping point is there to protect you from getting stuck or corrupting your saved game.

We estimate that Infinity is around 90% complete. The game was developed out of order so it's not the last 10% that is missing, but rather a bunch of parts throughout (this is why the preview ends fairly early on). Our plan is to finish the game eventually, but given how many years it has been, we can't make any guarantees. We've made the source code available to ensure that Infinity can live on regardless of what we do. Maybe if we don't finish the game anytime soon, someone else can. Or maybe what's playable can be ported to other platforms. We hope retrogamers will enjoy this little bit of history.

While the game might not strictly be complete, it's amazing that we're getting the chance to check it out 15 years after it was supposed to be released. If you've given it a spin then let us know by posting a comment below.

[source affinix.com]