If you're a fan of PS2-era open-world crime games like Grand Theft Auto III, Mafia, or Scarface: The World Is Yours, there's a good chance you'll have heard of The Getaway.
Set in London, Team Soho's 2002 title paid homage to British gangster films like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Get Carter and saw players exploring a faithfully reconstructed version of the UK Capital as both the ex-convict Mark Hammond and Detective Constable Frank Carter. Upon release, it got some pretty solid reviews from publications like Game Informer (who gave it a 9) and Eurogamer (who awarded it an 8), and later kickstarted a multi-media franchise including a 2004 sequel (The Getaway: Black Monday), a 2006 spin-off (Gangs of London), and a television show in 2020.
If you're wondering why we're telling you all this now, well, the answer to that is pretty simple. Adam Doree, the vice president of Ziff Davis, has just uploaded a couple of new Getaway-themed videos online, which contain previously unpublished b-roll of early versions of The Getaway and Black Monday, as well as his own high-quality source tapes of various Sony demonstrations of the "Piccadilly Circus" tech demo, which was a prototype shown during the development of the cancelled The Getaway 3.
The early footage of The Getaway comes from the demo shown at E3 2002, which notably featured a bunch of cut vehicles, early character models, and other changes, while The Getaway 2 footage appears to originate from the game's Beta (which was likely distributed to the press ahead of launch for previews).
Alongside the publication of the videos, Doree wrote the following about the footage:
"I have quite a lot of Getaway material in my archives, some of it previously unpublished. This video focuses on The Getaway 1 and The Getaway 2: Black Monday and I've put my Getaway 3 stuff in a separate video. I was super fond of The Getaway back in the day; digging up this material makes me want to go back and revisit the games and check out the way London looked in the game... and 20+ years ago (in some ways very different and in some ways it hasn't changed at all). The area in the game is my neighbourhood and I love seeing these recreations. Thanks to a close relationship with Sony, I had an early beta of The Getaway 1 waaaaaay before release, which was awesome as the game looked way ahead of its time and my flatmates were like "wtf is this and how do you have it". Sadly I don't think I ever recorded gameplay from that secret disc. But I did keep a bunch of stuff from The Getaway 1, 2 & 3, so here's what we have for this video, I am sure some of it may be lost/interesting etc"
You can watch both videos here or on Doree's channel. Don't forget to subscribe to see more incredible archive footage from the past.