Ratchet & Clank: Clone Home

This game was never completed and/or given a public release. As a result of this, keep in mind that the developers might have used or deleted some of the content featured here, had the game actually been released.

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Ratchet & Clank: Clone Home was intended to be the follow-up to Ratchet & Clank: Going Mobile, which had been released in 2005 by Sony Pictures Digital on J2ME and BREW. Planned for a 2006 release, the game was developed almost to completion before being scrapped. In 2007, an updated re-release of Going Mobile was instead published by Glu Mobile.

Many years later, fans from the community contacted one of the game's developers, who turned out to still have the only known surviving copy of the game on their Sony Ericsson W880i phone. It had turned out that the phone applied the OMA DRM to the game upon installation, meaning that the files ended up encrypted client-side, but a way to decrypt the files in order to retrieve them afterwards by applying a firmware patch was found on ancient forums. In order to get the anonymous developer/the phone's owner to do all that, they were paid a large amount of money (mostly covered by The Golden Bolt).

The dump's release consists of the game's .JAR file (the archive with all the required data) and its .JAD file (the text file for download installation based on the MANIFEST.MF file from the .JAR). The .JAR file has a build date of 2007-06-14, well after the game's cancellation, meaning that it was likely built from source for personal use at that date, and with Sony Ericsson phones in mind. The .JAD file for this game is fully optional, and only contains a couple of extra app properties for certain devices.

Curiously, one can notice a similarity between Clone Home and one specific version of Going Mobile (for Nokia s40v1 phones, version 1.9.8 from 2005), with the latter using an earlier iteration of the data format found in the former, as well as a hidden mention of JGT (Javaground Tools, also known as Xpress Suite) in the latter. It's unclear if that Going Mobile version was ghostwritten by Javaground, or if Handheld Games borrowed their tools to build it, only for Javaground themselves to get a chance at the sequel.

Download Ratchet & Clank: Clone Home (prototype) File: Ratchet and Clank Clone Home (Unreleased).zip (info)

Unused Graphics#

To do: The "Family Photos" tileset has a placeholder block with the word "blank" on it.

The game has a title graphic under the ID 2087 to display as part of the startup sequence, but the game incorrectly uses the Javaground logo a second time instead (giving the impression of a prolonged Javaground intro logo).

Various unused objects are present in this graphic stored under the ID 1073, such as the rail stopper and Payola from Going Mobile and an unused version of the teleporter.

Debug App Property#

Entering Cheat-Mode: true into a new line in the .JAD file will enable you to install the game with the ability to press the 9 key in-game to gain 5000 bolts and 45 ammo alongside a health refill, or to press it on the title screen to spawn in the final stage. Despite the name, this "cheat mode" could not have been used by players who would've bought the game had it been released.