Gaming Everything about the lost & leaked Hatsune Miku Project Diva Demo

[reha]

You can now read the full timeline from here!!

Hello, I'm gonna talk about the lost Hatsune Miku Project Diva Demo in this thread (not extend, nor 2nd, the first game). It was claimed that it was leaked back in 2008, but it's currently lost.


Everything started with this page, there were some RUMORS that the official demo was leaked in Japan. Sadly, it was claimed that Sega took down the links so there's no way to download it. You can see some in-game screenshots in the page.

Then in November 6 2014, a user called "St0n3" asked a forum that if somebody had the demo. A user named "sp193" claimed that they're gonna take a look on it, and the name of the original file could be "【PSP】(UMDISO)初音ミク -Project DIVA-（仮称）.iso", which is roughly 150 MB in size according to pages. The same user also claimed that it appeared as "hm_pd_003.iso" in a torrent website, but wasn't too sure if it's the same file as the original demo.

After a while, in December 5 2014, "St0n3" replied "sp193" that they've took a look on the "hm_pd_003.iso", and realized that the only file in the .iso is the LOGO.PMF, which appears to be a 16 minute long video which includes an early trailer of the game, some early PV footages and a black screen with some Japanese text on it. They also claimed that there are other folders in the file, but they're appeared to be blank. They've uploaded that 16 minute video to YouTube. After seeing that, "sp193" thought that this "playable demo" never existed at all, since all of the screenshots from the website that claimed the demo was leaked had the same screenshots as the other Japanese game news websites' screenshots. Replies after "sp193" 's reply were just other people asking if there were some news about the demo, only notable one is from "k3iq", they've claimed that Asami Shimoda (the voice actor of Kagamine Rin and Len) and Saki Fujita (the voice actor of Hatsune Miku) played the demo, according to the blog post which appears to be a report of the Tokyo Game Show 2008, they've also linked the blog post in their reply.

7 years later, in June 6 2021, a channel called "Akira San" on Youtube posted a video which had the footage of the ICON.PMF, the same video as "St0n3" 's, straight from the "hm_pd_003.iso" and some information about the video in the description. They've claimed that the software might be fake since the text on the last sections of the video translates as "This software is fake", "Press the PS button or HOME button to end the game. If it doesn't finish, it will shut down automatically" and "Shut down". They've claimed that they got the file from a guy named "Bob the Builder" on Discord, which they've got the file from Usenet.

Now, I'll talk about my own research on the next section.

I can confirm that "hm_pd_003.iso" is 100% FAKE.

I've decided to take a look on the "hm_pd_003.iso", and here's what I saw:

The file structure is EXACT SAME as the GTA Liberty City Stories' file structure.
Not only that, the Game ID of the file is "ULJM05309" which is the same Game ID as Japanese version of Phantasy Star Portable, the .iso has the exact same executable binaries and the exact same UMD_DATA as GTA Liberty City Stories!

(ULJM-05255 is the Title ID of the Japanese region of GTA Liberty City Stories)


First thing GTA Liberty City Stories loads is the LOGO.PMF file (the Rockstar logo), the reason why the "hm_pd_003.iso" shutdowns/crashes your PSP after it tells you to quit the game, is just because it couldn't find the TITLES.PMF file, which is the the next video that's played right after the Rockstar logo on GTA Liberty City Stories. The device shutdowns/crashes if you press the X button, this also proves that it's fake because normally in GTA Liberty City Stories if you press X it skips the Rockstar logo and plays the TITLES.PMF, but since "hm_pd_003.iso" couldn't find the TITLES.PMF file, it crashes the PSP.

It was created to make people think that it's the playable demo. You can also tell that by taking a look at the file size. The file size is roughly the same (146 MB) as the possible original playable demo (150 MB).

There's also a possibility that the "playable leaked demo" never existed (as the user "sp193" claims on the projectdiva.net forum), some people also claimed that it got leaked on PSN/PS Store for a while, but I don't think that it's correct. It might got leaked as EBOOT since some concept art/models/stages that were shown during the Tokyo Game Show 2008 got uploaded to the website that claimed the demo got leaked.

This leads to us that currently nobody has the playable demo EXCEPT Sega, since they've made Asami Shimoda and Saki Fujita play the game on Tokyo Game Show 2008. So this means that the demo is probably lost forever, unless somebody that has the file decides to share it.

Yep, that's it for this thread. Sorry if I have some grammar mistakes. I'll edit this thread when I get more information/any news/updates. There's also a Discord server about this demo, we usually discuss things about it. If you want to join us, please PM me. I can send you the invite link. I'm not linking it to here since it would kinda count as "advertisement".

Please let me know if you have any questions!

See also:
LostMediaWiki Article
hm_pd_003 from Archive.org

Peace!

EDIT 1 (09/26/21): Fixed some typos!
EDIT 2 (04/10/22): Added more info!
EDIT 3 (06/01/22): Fixed some more typos!
EDIT 4 (12/11/22): Added more info & fixed broken images!
EDIT 5 (11/13/23): Added the link to the full timeline & fixed some minor typos!

 

[reha]

THE DEEP RESEARCH

Me and the other fellow people on the research server came to a conclusion!

So, we researched literally the whole internet for this demo, blogs, news websites, archived torrent websites, even some suspicious websites. We've finally found some possible .iso torrents, I will now go through each one...

Before that, we have also found out that another leak happened before the game's release. According to Japanese blog websites, the full game got leaked around June 26-28th 2009, when we compared the files, the only notable difference was that the firmware update files were removed from the file. The rest was the same as the full game itself.

THE DISCOVERY

First ones we've found were the original torrent of "hm_pd_003.iso" (which was already found before) and that June 2009 leak full game iso. We've found the torrents by copying a certain part of the dead torrent website's url, then replace it with its' currently working one.

After those, we've had two links waiting to be discovered. Meanwhile, while searching on a torrent website, we've found another June 2009 leak full game iso. This particular one had a replaced Opening.pmf file which was just an advertisement of a Spanish PSP iso website.

Finally, we've also found the 2 unknown ones by finding their hashes and searching for them on a torrent metafata search website. Those torrents were dead and we couldn't download them. We assumed that the large one was just another June 2009 leak. But the other one, was the real leak, since according to information we have, the original demo was downloaded by TheFuzzy's Japanese friend on SHARE P2P using a ShareDB link, what we had was a sharedb link but it wasn't working. It included the hash in its url, so we tried to search using that, but the metadata search website gives an "Found Nothing" error when trying to search it. This was probably because SEGA took down this specific torrent back in 2008.

While trying to find the previous torrents, we've also discovered another torrent link. It was just an EBOOT with a size around 600 MB. We also think that this was just the June 2009 leak converted to EBOOT. We've found the details by searching the hash on a torrent metadata search website.

CONCLUSION

And, that was the end of our journey. After all, all of the other isos were June 2009 leak except the ShareDB one. It is the original leaked demo. As I've mentioned, the only confirmed download is by TheFuzzy's Japanese friend. Since TheFuzzy told us that they've lost contact with that person before, it's probably lost FOREVER, unless, one day that person decides to share it OR somebody else that has the file just shares it.

Yep!! That's it. We've had a lot of fun and excitement while doing this research. We've also learnt a lot of stuff about torrents!!!

Thanks to Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Lost 2008 Demo Discussion server and its members on Discord:

Arthur
_ELIAS_
el waddle
dishwater
divadiva
EFtornado09
k3iq
melancholic
Monkey Magic
MrBossClay
reha (me)
sunny12557 (server creator/owner)
Yuu

01/17/23

 

[reha]

NEW INFO
A new member joined the server, named “cntrpl”, finalized the research & we got new info thanks to them!!

Turns out that the ShareDB link was just the same thing as the first fake demo “hm_pd_003.iso”.
They've searched for the hash of the ShareDB link (which was the most positive one) on the VirusTotal search website and it redirected to the “hm_pd_003.iso”, in fact, it was just the same file as the first fake demo which was found by “Akira San” on YouTube. This leads to us that THE DEMO NEVER GOT LEAKED TO PUBLIC. We can completely confirm that!!

(The VirusTotal search results of the ShareDB hash)

(The SHA-1 hash of the hm_pd_003.iso)

This probably also means that TheFuzzy's Japanese friend was just lying about the demo, or perhaps that person was the creator of the fake demo. Disappeared all of a sudden, probably to avoid from getting clowned or something. cntrpl also have found & downloaded the original June 2009 leaked iso, it was the same thing as the full game itself. Crazy how they managed to leak the demo before it's release!

Again, thanks to Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Lost 2008 Demo Discussion server and its members, especially cntrpl for finalizing the research!

01/29/23