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As Twitter voted for it, albeit it in a tie, the time has seemingly now come to start dumping beta test discs for online PS2 games. The first game in line is Final Fantasy XI, which I’m sure needs no introduction to most anyone following this blog. So far as I can gather from my own research, this version of the game was used during the Japanese beta tests that Square held from December 17, 2001 to April 26, 2002 across four different servers, Chaos, Zande, Golbez, and Xdeath, although the latter two are said to have lasted only until February 15, 2002, at which point they merged with Zande.

Included in the archive are the beta test disc for Final Fantasy XI itself, a beta version of PlayOnline, which was needed to install the game and get it running online, and scans of all the printed assets that came with my copy, which in this case consists of the cover art, extremely sparse manual, and disc label art. While obviously not remotely playable at this point and not even all that usable in emulation due to a lack of PS2 hard drive emulation, I figure it’s worth archiving for posterity and so that anyone interesting in digging for old pre-launch assets can do so.

There are still more discs like this to come, so make sure to check back now and again as I upload them!

-Pepsi