19 years later, a lost part of God of War finally made it to PS2

God of War series has sold tens of millions of copies, spawned remasters, collector editions, and a move to Norse mythology, but one entry spent almost two decades existing only in the memory of flip phone owners.

The mobile God of War: Betrayal remained the only game in the franchise never released on a single Sony console, steadily drifting toward lost media status.

That has now changed thanks to a group of enthusiasts. The channels PS2GAMESDEV and Eclipseblade Studio put together an unofficial port of God of War: Betrayal for the PlayStation 2 – the very platform where the series got its start back in 2005.

The game runs on the PCSX2 emulator, works on Steam Deck through EmuDeck, and has already been tested on real PS2 hardware via HDLoader, loading the ISO straight from the console hard drive.

The original launched in 2007 as a 2D side-scroller for Java phones, designed to be played on button-based handsets where Kratos attacks were mapped across the numeric keypad.

Story-wise, it's not some throwaway spin-off but a proper bridge between Ghost of Sparta and God of War II: Kratos gets framed for the murder of Kerykes, son of Hermes, and Olympus sends hunters after him. The canon status of the story was confirmed at one point by Bruno Velasquez, animation director at Santa Monica Studio, who worked on the series since its very first entry.

Nostalgia for the mobile classic runs into reality pretty fast, though. The playthrough takes about an hour, the combat system feels primitive even by the standards of portable games from that era, and the story cuts off right when things start getting interesting.

The video with download instructions and links got pulled from YouTube, so the files have scattered across the Discord servers run by the port creators, and Eclipseblade Studio has promised patches as bug reports come in.