Nearly twenty years after its supposed release, Ratchet & Clank: Clone Home is no longer just a legend. A group of fans has found a playable build of the mobile phone game and published it on the Internet Archive, where anyone can download it.
A sequel known only from rumours
Clone Home was due in 2006 as the follow-up to Ratchet & Clank: Going Mobile, the 2005 phone game that reviewed well at the time. The sequel never officially came out, although hints that it had been developed had been circulating for years.
Judging by the visible bugs and glitches, the recovered build was close to completion but never fully polished.
A long and costly hunt
YouTuber The Golden Bolt documented the search, which was anything but easy. At one point a group of students went looking for two-decade-old phones in the hope that one still held a copy of Going Mobile and, with luck, its sequel.
An unconfirmed theory says the game was leaked to mobile carriers at some point, which would explain why some devices had it installed.
Sony and Insomniac Games haven't commented formally, but said they were glad to see the game back. The find joins a growing list of Java-phone-era projects that preservation enthusiasts are pulling back from obscurity.