Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
We are an Cancelled & Unreleased Video games archive with prototypes, developer history and assets for many computers and consoles of all ages. A non-profit large archive dedicated to preserving lost games that were never released to the public. Sharing history and stories from the developers, assets and more before it is too late. GTW has been preserving lost video game history online since 1999, and long before that offline.
Please Browse our archive and discover the many entries that we host for many different platforms.
Following the recent recovery of the Game Gear game Alien Olympics, we were surprised to find a curious “Alien.500” file that I suspected might be an Amiga conversion.
Thanks to the absolutely amazing work of Galahad, that’s now been confirmed. He’s managed to patch up the file and get it working – allowing us to load and play what remains of a very early Amiga conversion by Mark Greenshields. Continue reading
Before LucasArts’ X-Wing soared into polygonal glory on PC, it began life as a sprite-based space sim built on the engine used in SWOTL and Battlehawks 1942. Thanks to a tip from Andreas Wanda, a rare glimpse of this early version may have surfaced in a 1992 slideshow video – complete with a possible screenshot at the 0:30 mark.
Thanks to contributor JP, another screenshot has been found within The Adventurer, LucasArt’s old newsletter. A very different cockpit to the final game and the TIE interceptors certainly look like they could be sprites. Or was it merely a mock up?
Could more of this original prototype still be out there? With many of the original devs still around, there’s hope. If you know anything more, please do get in touch! Continue reading
Originally conceived as a spiritual follow-up to Abandoned Places, The 7th Sword of Mendor (also known as Seventh Sword) was an ambitious RPG project from Hungarian team Amnesty Design. The game was pitched as a graphically detailed, story-driven experience that blended classic Dungeon Master-style gameplay with the open exploration and the look/feel of Might & Magic III.
Despite several years in development, magazine previews, and even a playable demo sneaking out on PC, the title ultimately vanished following the demise of its publisher. Continue reading
As the archive continues to grow each week, we’re now excited to bring you the long-lost NES version of Tip-Off (due out way back in 1992), fully recovered in its final state and available for download.
Originally developed by Enigma Variations for Anco and set for release via Imagineer, the NES version was ultimately canned when Anco’s partnership with Imagineer ended. With high manufacturing costs and no major backer to support production, the financial risk proved too great in the end. Continue reading
Following Miner 2049er, Bounty Bob was now set for the Big City and its fire department, where he must fight a major skyscraper fire in what was to be Scraper Caper. Sadly, the game was never to be.
Way back in 2001, Bill Hogue gave a reply back on a user group about the game:
“Scraper Caper was supposed to be our next game after Miner 2049er. We had a lot of success with Miner and ended up licensing it for just about every computer that existed at the time. This put a lot of pressure on us to come up with something that was incredible and could duplicate Miner’s popularity.”
A very short entry for a title that was released in a very limited form, but is currently missing in action and yet to be preserved (we think!). Mind Bender (or Mindbender) was a Mastermind clone written by Tom Larrow, and was submitted to BBS sites in 1993.
It was also included in some Shareware compilations back in the day, as one of the registrations made for the game was from a disk purchased at a mall kiosk. It seems that thanks to DOS Games, it was distributed on a Software of the Month Club CD in July 1994, so could anyone still have a copy of that?
The game itself was written in GW Basic, and was likely compiled into an EXE that was around 40-50Kb in size. Our searches at the time have only found a Windows version of the game by someone else. Within this particular game is Tom’s full name, and an address of Norwalk, OH where he lived at the time as a nag screen.
Do you have a copy of Tom’s game at all? And if so, can you help us re-unite him with his long lost game?
With thanks to Marc Schulder for highlighting, DOS Games for helping with the search and Tom Larrow for further information.
HiWar was a Red Alert style game being developed on the Amiga 1200 by Virtual Design, and set to be published by Vulcan Software around 1997 time. The game was started by the company Optimus Nexus originally under the title of “High Worlds”. According to an interview with Artur Bardowski, one of the graphic designers, the game was canned due to the shrinking market.
A demo was created and sent to publishers by Mariusz Zieliński (coder), Artur Bardowski (artwork) and Maciej Chomicz (audio), where Vulcan Software took a particular interest – but that was about it sadly. A PC version was however being developed in parallel was eventually released as Tridonis in 1998 and published by LK Avalon. Continue reading
Our next entry into the Games That Weren’t archives is a very early and neat side-scrolling mech fighter called Mechanoids 2 – The Final Conflict. We’re not aware of there being a prequal though!
During some preservation work, we were asked to keep an eye out for the title for the SNES by Darren Melbourne, and a few nights later we managed to find two builds that had been compiled up and which worked right away in SNES 9X. Continue reading
Volatile Games was a division of Blitz Games, created with one goal in mind: to make games for a mature audience. Their first real step into this world was Reservoir Dogs, a video game adaptation of Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic. While it didn’t set the world on fire, it proved that Volatile Games could handle darker, more violent themes. It was their way of dipping a toe into deeper waters.
After Reservoir Dogs, they set their sights on something bigger – Possession, a zombie apocalypse game. Unfortunately, after months of production, that project never saw the light of day. But tucked away in their history is another title that has gone largely undocumented : Hannibal the Conqueror. Continue reading
The Few was a wargame that aimed to faithfully recreate the Battle of Britain in its entirety. It could be played solo or with a second player, either via Minitel, a serial cable connecting an Atari ST, Amiga, or PC, or on the same computer in a local two-player mode.
In two-player mode, one player controls the British forces while the other commands the Germans. In single-player mode, you take full control of the British forces against the AI. At the start of the game, you were to choose between two modes: Historical, which allows you to experience the entire Battle of Britain from beginning to end, or Standard, where the battle is divided into three distinct phases. Continue reading
DISCLAIMER: We are a non-profit digitisation project, aiming to digitally preserve software and history which would otherwise be lost for good. If for any reason there is anything that you do not wish to be on the website, please contact us for removal.
Games That Weren't® is the registered trademark of Frank Gasking.
