Homefront: The Revolution houses a full 4K port of TimeSplitters 2, but players almost lost access to it forever. Matt Phillips, a former developer for Dambuster Studios, shared on Twitter that one of his greatest triumphs was successfully porting the 2002 video game into 2016’s Homefront: The Revolution. Then, he shared that access to the secret had been lost to time.
In an Easter-themed tweet, game designer Jan Willem Nijman asked developers to share their favorite Easter eggs from titles they’ve worked on. Alongside others from the industry sharing their stories, Phillips revealed his work porting Timesplitters 2 into Homefront: The Revolution. He went on to say that access had been lost after an intentional leak resulted in the leaker being banned and their post deleted from Discord. Luckily, the internet community tried to remedy the situation — and they were successful.
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Initially posting in the thread, Phillips tweeted: “My proudest moment. Fully playable, native 4K port of TimeSplitters 2 hidden in this arcade machine in Homefront: The Revolution.” Pictured in his response is an in-game image of an arcade cabinet. At the top of the machine, a worn and scuffed up label has just enough detail to make out the title TimeSplitters 2. Just underneath the screen are the words, TIME TO SPLIT!
Going into further detail, Phillips replied to his post, adding that he’d even went as far as to theoretically create a method for players to experience the port together. Phillips said, “It’s probably about time this small fact came out, too: I ported the network stack to ride on top of HF:TR‘s co-op mode. If, and that’s a big if, anyone was able to hack two or more arcades into one of the co-op maps, it’ll boot to the multilayer menu.” An exciting Easter egg suddenly became even more interesting.
Phillips even went as far as to have a friend “leak” the code required to unlock the content, but they were met with skepticism. He added that he no longer had any record of the code, tweeting “the unlock code has been lost to time, I don’t have the notebook with it in any more. I once gave it to a friend to leak in some Discord channel and they called him a liar and banned his account ahahah.” But, that isn’t the end of the story.
Players were amazed by the work that went into this Easter egg and were saddened by the thought that they’d never get the chance to experience it. Enter Spencer Perreault, Xbox’s Principal Software Engineer and self-titled Emulation Ninja. On Thursday, Perreault managed to determine the codes required to access the full TimeSplitters 2 port and promptly responded to Philips’ tweet.
Fans of the TimeSplitters series and Homefront: The Revolution players now have the chance to go hands-on with one of the classics of a past generation. Though the port has been reported to be somewhat unstable across different platforms, it’s impressive that it even exists. If anything, it has rekindled interest in two throwback shooter series that have earned a return to the spotlight.
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