Welcome to Games That Weren't!

We are a 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.

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Boszorkány (Witch)

Posted: by Frank Gasking

1988 Vilmos Molnár

Platforms: Commodore Plus 4

A short entry on a Commodore Plus 4 entry which was due for release by Novotrade in 1988. The game was called Boszorkány, which is Hungarian for ‘Witch’.

It isn’t clear exactly what kind of game it was, so we hope to learn more in the future to add here. Thanks to Plus4World, we get to see a few assets and development notes – including a rare screenshot of the title screen from a computer christmas party.

Once more comes to light, then we will update this page.

With thanks to Csaba Virag for the heads up and details on the title and Plus4World for the assets.

Gallery
Posted in: Commodore 16 and Plus/4, Reviews | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Unknown Plus 4 game

Posted: by Frank Gasking

1993 TCFS

Platforms: Commodore Plus 4

A video surfaced in recent weeks, which was recorded at a home meeting in December 1993, a day before a Christmas computer event in Hungary. Sadly the game has no name at present.

Unknown shot

The game is a Dizzy clone, which is built from the ground up and made by TCFS, who is a prolific Plus 4 developer who has done some amazing conversions such as Lemmings, Giana Sisters and most recently Ghosts’N Goblins arcade. Continue reading →

Posted in: Commodore 16 and Plus/4, Reviews | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Various Game Boy Advance prototypes

Posted: by Frank Gasking

2001 Planet Interactive

Platform: Gameboy Advance

Next up in the archives are a set of Game Boy Advance prototypes, though they are in a special compiled format where the prototypes are meant to run within a Windows executable. The prototypes are Action Man, Casper, Cube, Kong and RotatingMenus.

Scrshot

When you run the executables, you just get a blank window with “EMA (C) Planet Interactive” title. Upon further investigation, we stumbled across a Planet Interactive Development Materials archive which was preserved by Codebound last year. The main screenshots on the archive show the EMA executable in action for Kong, showing it working and on what seems to be a Windows 98 build. There are also accompanying files with the executable. Continue reading →

Posted in: Game Boy Advance, Prototype, Unused materials | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Kevin Keegan’s Player Manager

Posted: by Frank Gasking

1993 Anco Software

Platforms: PC DOS and Commodore Amiga

Thanks to adverts that appeared in magazines back in the day, it is known that both PC and Amiga versions of Kevin Keegan’s Player Manager was planned. Sadly, only the Super Nintendo version would ever see release. But what of the PC and Amiga versions and how far did they get?

kevin largescreenshot

Well, as you can see by the above screenshot, pretty far! Today we have recovered remains of the PC conversion which contains the managerial and arcade parts, and seems to be around 60-70% complete. A lot of menu options are missing, and the game is quite glitchy in places. We believe this is as far as the development got. Continue reading →

Posted in: Commodore Amiga, PC, Reviews | Tagged: | 1 Comment

Flash Gordon

Posted: by Frank Gasking

1986 Mastertronic

Platforms: Atari 400/800

Flash Gordon was a great budget title from Mastertronic, and one which I enjoyed a lot on the Commodore 64. One thing that stood out in particular was the amount of different styles of games present, but also the amazing music by Rob Hubbard.

Whilst digging through some old Atari magazines, GTW’s Ross Sillifant found reference and articles indicating that an Atari 400/800 version of the game was on the cards. It never saw the light of day though – so what happened and how far did it get? Continue reading →

Posted in: Atari 400/800/XL, Reviews | Tagged: | Leave a comment

F1-X (Working title)

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

2000 Titus

Platforms: Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Color (?)

With out next entry, we may have two completely separate games here – but for now we present a game that was due for release by Titus on at least the Game Boy Advance, which is only known as F1-X (which might be F1 Xtreme or similar).

mock large

All we know was that the game was in development for a few months or so by Ian James, with graphics by Louise Herd – but the game was never finished as far as we know, before Ian and Louise went on to work on an Army Men game for the Game Boy Advance, which also was never released. Continue reading →

Posted in: Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Color, Reviews | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Igor: Objetivo Uikokahonia (Enhanced)

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

1995-1996 Infogrames

Platform: PC

While Igor: Objetivo Uikokahonia is best known for its 1994 Spanish release and a later English version published in the US by Optik Software – Pendulo Studios had once begun work on a far more ambitious follow-up version of the game for French publisher Infogrames. This project was ultimately cancelled, but its technology would go on to form the foundations of Hollywood Monsters.

igor remake1

The existence of this unreleased Infogrames version was confirmed in an extensive interview with Pendulo founders Rafael Latiegui, Ramón Hernáez and Felipe Gómez, originally published by Macedonia Magazine and now preserved via the Internet Archive. Reflecting on the period following Igor’s release, Latiegui explained:

“It’s true that there were many meetings with Infogrames, and in fact, an agreement was reached for its distribution. However, due to their internal problems, they ultimately had to abandon several projects, including Igor.”

Continue reading →

Posted in: PC, Reviews | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Legacy of the Necromancer

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

1992 Virgin

Platforms: Commodore Amiga and PC MS-DOS

Not to be confused with the text adventure trilogy of the same name, Legacy of the Necromancer was a planned dungeon crawling RPG in the style of Dungeon Master. It was to be developed by a team at Virgin, and not Westwood (as it was incorrectly reported by press at the time). The title was even shown at the Winter CES that year on Virgin’s stand, but it never saw release.

legacy shot1

The game’s storyline was a familiar but ambitious fantasy setup with a story as follows:

Two centuries earlier, a necromancer had unleashed an age of darkness and cold as punishment for mankind’s attempt to kill him. His curse rebounded however and he ended up imprisoned in a frozen temple beneath a dungeon near the player’s village. With geothermal heat melting the ice and threatening his escape, the necromancer was once again close to regaining his powers. As the chosen hero, players were tasked by the village elders to descend into the necromancer’s lair – overcoming deadly traps, puzzles and monsters to destroy him once and for all. Continue reading →

Posted in: Commodore Amiga, PC, Reviews | Tagged: | Leave a comment