Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
Total results: 1129
Short post to highlight and early development screen for Elite’s Last Battle on the Commodore 64 thanks to Martin Inter. This was found on the back of the cover and has a character block for Alyssa strangely used for the boss section. Continue reading
Short post to highlight and early development screen for Ghosts n Goblins on the Commodore 64 thanks to Martin Inter. This was found on the back of the cover and has very little different – apart from the score panel being missing at this stage. Continue reading
Having a break now after a long year. Time to slow down a little, play some games and read some books.
Thank you to everyone for the kindness, encouragement and support this year – it genuinely means more than you know. If you’d like to help the project recover even more lost pieces of history, simply spreading the word really helps.
Take care, and all the very best for 2026!
Frank.
PS. If you want to look back at our updates for this Christmas, please take a look at https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/tag/xmas2025/ Continue reading
Back in the day, my Commodore Format magazine used to have an ‘Early Warning Scanner’ with games that were coming soon for the C64. On there for a while was Thomas The Tank Engine 2, but it never really moved and nothing more was shown in magazines. I assumed it was vapourware.
“The games were written in 1990 when Clockwize had moved to an ‘office’ in the town.” explained Dean. “It was really just one big long room that had once been a dance studio. The Alternative budget titles that we did were usually just based around a title that was given to us such as ‘Punch And Judy’ and the design was up to us. Thomas 2 though needed to be based on the book ‘The Race’ where Thomas races Bertie the bus. Both games needed to be fairly simple for younger children to play. Thomas 2 would turn out to be the least problematic.” Continue reading
Back in the day, my Commodore Format magazine used to have an ‘Early Warning Scanner’ with games that were coming soon for the C64. On there for a while was Sooty and Sweep 2, but it never really moved and nothing more was shown in magazines. I assumed it was vapourware.
Roughly around 2009, Dean Hickingbottom got in touch to reveal that Clockwize were the team working on both Sooty 2 and Thomas 2 for Alternative. Neither got released due to a dispute with Alternative, even though bizarrely they were both finished for C64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad and Atari. Inlays were even produced too. Continue reading
Piracy Deluxe began life as an Amiga conversion of the Commodore 64 classic game Piracy by ACE Games, originally released around 1986. Development started in 1992 and continued intermittently until 1994, with the project expanding significantly over time before ultimately falling victim to the collapsing Amiga market. Continue reading
It is that time of the year again, and it has been one with many ups and downs. We finish the year as we always aim to, with a set of new releases and recoveries for you to enjoy. Hopefully you will enjoy what we have in store for you: Continue reading
As a bonus Christmas update, we have the very rare ZX81 edition of Mugsy, which many of you will remember as a popular release from Melbourne House. This is the original idea and design which Melbourne House would base their game off, created by Collins Computing. Continue reading
Hill 19 was to be a strategic action-shooter game, very similar to Ikari Warriors/Commando, but with more strategy involved. The player would control a team of characters (believed to be about 3), including Radio and Gunner. Sadly it was never to be though! Continue reading
Thanks to a kind loan by developer Lance Abson, our next Christmas update presents a set of source code and build disks from Sci-Fi (which was released by Digital Magic Software) for you to check out. One of the disks also contains some art assets used within development and may be early versions of artwork. Continue reading
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Games That Weren't® is the registered trademark of Frank Gasking.
