Thanks to one fan's lucky eBay find, the long-lost Dreamcast incarnation ofToeJam & Earl 3 is now available for public download.

Though it would eventually appear on Microsoft's first-generation Xbox, ToeJam & Earl 3 was initially planned as a first-party exclusive for Sega's ill-fated, final console. Unfortunately, the Dreamcast was discontinued in 2001, leaving the then-in-development ToeJam & Earl 3 to vanish for more than a decade.

Fast forward to 2013, when a member of the Assembler Games forums calling his or herself "ZakhooiTM" ordered a Dreamcast development kit from eBay. Unexpectedly, the kit contained code that, with a minimum of effort, would be compiled into a playable beta of the Dreamcast ToeJam & Earl 3.

ZakhooiTM claims that the game becomes increasingly buggy as you move further into it, but also that at least twelve of the game's stages are functional. Gameplay in ToeJam & Earl 3 is described as unlike the eventual Xbox release, and more akin to the earlier Genesis games, except in full 3D. If you'd like to test the beta for yourself, you can find everything you need to get it up and running (with the exception of a functional Dreamcast) on the Assembler Games forums.

In lieu of seeking money for this release, ZakhooiTM asks grateful fans to make donations to the Mardan School. If that still feels too close to piracy for comfort, the video above contains more than 30 minutes of footage captured by ZakhooiTM while exploring the beta. Nobody's going to sue you for watching the clip, we promise.

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/12/30/to...2-years-too-l/