Hello!

[Matt Tucker]

Good day!)))

A few other fans and I are looking for a very specific pre-release (alpha-beta?) demo of The Sting (aka Der Clou! 2) 2001. The origin of this demo is unclear - one of the "lucky" people who was lucky enough to play it received it from disk by mail from one of the gaming forum participants, along with several more demo games, before the official release, back in 2000 (unfortunately, the origin was not specified at the time of receipt.). The second “witness” played this version until the spring of 2001, but, according to him, he got it on a disk from some gaming magazine. This version was in English, and is notable for the fact that instead of 2 buildings, 3 were available for robbery, depicted in the screenshot - in the form of an eastern Arab palace. This building appeared in two trailers for this game. The building was firmly imprinted in the memory of the players because when loading the planning mode for the theft of this building, the game crashed when the character Matt Tucker moved, but in the city mode it was available for review, and at the planning stage, Autogen was automatically added to the inventory. Judging by the remains of textures related to this building found in the game archive (alas, very few), it was a Jewelry\Antiques store. After the official release of the game in the spring of 2001, demo versions from all over the world no longer contained this building; it was removed, although in the full version the recognizable foundation remained (seen in the screenshot). The channels of entry and origin of this mysterious version of the game from Austria to the CIS before going on sale in Austria itself and Europe as a whole is still a mystery (although it was on the packaging of European countries, and with an interior), there is no exact information about it, but it’s possible , did anyone also accidentally receive it or at least remember/can guess where it came from? It is possible that some version was passed around through unofficial/private channels in 2000, or was sent to a gaming magazine by mistake and then retracted, but not the entire batch. Officially, no demo versions of the game were released in 2000, and the inability of the mission of this “demo” in the planning mode for the 3rd heist suggests that it was not originally intended for publication. Thanks in advance for your interest.
P.S. Currently, for 3 months, all demos and full versions of the game available on the Internet have been checked, many images from world gaming magazines from 2000-2001 have been checked, but nothing has been found. Mystery.

https://gifyu.com/image/SiEcs

https://gifyu.com/image/SiEc3

[Scaryfun]

Hi!
The Spanish release has photo of that room on back cover - https://www.abandonsocios.org/wiki/imag ... rasera.jpg
Game download: https://archive.org/details/videogame_gfr3gr2
English and Australian covers also show that room, so did they remove it from game and didn't change the covers?

The German release has that building on the back cover too - https://www.mobygames.com/game/4295/the ... ver-22738/
Oranzzsoft release - https://www.mobygames.com/game/4295/the ... er-269883/

[Matt Tucker]

Hi!
The Spanish release has photo of that room on back cover - https://www.abandonsocios.org/wiki/imag ... rasera.jpg
Game download: https://archive.org/details/videogame_gfr3gr2
English and Australian covers also show that room, so did they remove it from game and didn't change the covers?

The German release has that building on the back cover too - https://www.mobygames.com/game/4295/the ... ver-22738/
Oranzzsoft release - https://www.mobygames.com/game/4295/the ... er-269883/

Yes, this is the whole absurdity of the situation. This building appeared on many packages and even on the texture of the CDs themselves, but was removed from the game, leaving only small traces in the textures and a few models.