Games That Weren’t (GTW) is a large archive dedicated to documenting and finding lost/unreleased games across many different platforms. Running online since 1999 (longer if you count offline) and recently celebrating our 25th Anniversary in 2024. We are a non-profit archive with no financial backing, producing content out of passion for game history preservation.
If you would like to support us in some way, please help spread the word about our project and help share posts that you find interesting or would like to help us recover. Each page has a social media share link, all of which helps to widen the net and hopefully learn about certain titles within our archives.
A little bit of history…
Games That Weren’t was first inspired by a Commodore 64 magazine article by Ian Osborne in a late issue of Commodore Force in 1993. Entitled, “That Was the Game That Wasn’t“, the feature was of great interest to a young 11yr old Frank Gasking, and shed light on titles that had never been released.
Frank wondered what it would be like to actually play some of these games that were shown and began contacting friends in the C64 scene to try and pick up copies of those games mentioned in the article. After managing to get hold of a few of them that had leaked out, Frank researched through many old magazines and started to uncover even more unreleased / incomplete games.
It was clear that Ian’s article had only merely scratched the surface, and so began a long search and investigation which has lasted over 20 years. At the time though back around 1997 – enough information was gathered where a regular feature was created for the now sadly deceased Commodore Zone magazine, named “Games That Weren’t“.
Popularity of the feature encouraged Frank to create a dedicated web site to cover more about other unreleased games on the Commodore 64. Launched in 1999, GTW64 was born and grew rapidly, where games began to be found thanks to the wonders of the Internet and the links that were made with developers that were coming online. We were one of the first sites dedicated to unreleased and lost games at the time. Here is an early glimpse from Web Archive.
It became an archive where you could download many lost / unfinished games for the Commodore 64, but also learn more about certain titles, or at least collate information on those which were yet to be found.
Building upon what was once just a C64 archive, eventually gamesthatwerent.com was created as our primary website, dedicated to covering all platforms. As well as our GTW64 site, we also have an Amiga GTW site which is ran by Adrian Simpson. Occasionally we will also post news from other preservation projects, but we mainly share news and other findings via our social media streams, including twitter.
We need you!
Preserving gaming history has never been the work of just one group or individual. For decades, countless passionate people and communities have come together to uncover lost games and ensure that history isn’t forgotten.
Collaboration is at the heart of what we do, and finding lost games is made possible by YOU! Every contribution, no matter how small. Whether it’s credits, brief information, or a tip – it all drives us forward in our mission. We value every bit of help we receive and always aim to credit those who contribute in any way. If you’ve been involved with a piece of unreleased software, please reach out to us.
Sharing our work
We are generally happy if people use our research for producing articles, as the more articles out there on certain games, the more widespread the details become of that title… plus of course the better the chances of something being recovered! However, all we ask is that you please make an acknowledgement to the source in some way.
Sadly, we have had a few instances of late where we have gathered/published research (in our own limited and spare time), only for it to be lifted without any credit or acknowledgement. This has also spread to recoveries themselves in recent years.
