Canceled Rare SNES RPG Project Dream Has Leaked Online

A playable prototype of Project Dream — Rare's canceled SNES RPG that eventually evolved into Banjo-Kazooie — has surfaced on the Internet Archive. The upload appeared on September 9, posted by a user going by FVCKAsha&Phil, a pointed jab at current Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and former boss Phil Spencer.

The user describes the build as a "SNES proof-of-concept alpha" of Dream: Land of Giants and says they acquired it through a chain of hands — "from someone who got it from someone, who got it from somewhere" — deliberately keeping the source vague to avoid implicating anyone. Their stated motivation is frustration with Xbox's handling of Rare, the broader industry's pivot toward AI and layoffs, and Microsoft's political stances. "With the current state of the industry and Microsoft's current heartless gutting and mismanagement of Rare and other companies it controls... I feel it's more important to make sure this is properly preserved," they wrote on the Archive page. They also called on others to release what they're sitting on, specifically name-dropping a Twelve Tales Conker 64 prototype they believe exists but don't have.

Project Dream started development around 1995 as a fantasy RPG for SNES. The game eventually outgrew the hardware, and development shifted to N64, where it also changed genre — leaning into a pirate adventure setting — and swapped its young human lead for Banjo, an anthropomorphic bear who had originally been a minor side character. That N64 project became Banjo-Kazooie, released in 1998 to widespread acclaim. Fans have known about Project Dream for decades and seen official snippets of both the SNES and N64 versions over the years, but a playable SNES build has never been publicly available until now.

The leak has landed with obvious excitement in retro and Rare fan communities, with footage of the prototype running on original hardware already circulating. The leaker says this is the only Rare artifact they personally have, but hopes the release encourages others to preserve and share what's still sitting on private hard drives.