Cancelled & Unreleased Video Games for the Commodore 64 Since 1999
Welcome to Games That Weren't 64!
We cover Cancelled & Unreleased Video games for the Commodore 64 computer. A non-profit large archive dedicated to preserving lost games that were never released to the public, as well as prototypes and the odd preservation of released titles. Our aim to share history and stories from the developers, assets and more before it is too late. GTW has been preserving lost video game history since 1999, and long before that offline.
Please Browse our archive and discover the many entries that we host and have saved over the years.
Our fifth update of the year has a number of new entries added, including a game that was once submitted to Zzap and just disappeared, beginnings of a Pacman game that never was intended for Mastertronic, and Elite’s strange Commando-themed game that would eventually be renamed to Duet. We also have some updates to existing entries (details of each update in the history notes). More for you again next month!
Whilst at Zzap Live in May 2025, we met up with the legendary Tim Gilberts, who set up Gilsoft at the age of just 17. Tim flagged up that he had a very rare Italian bootleg of The Quill which didn’t seem to be out there and preserved called “Adventure Writer (Creator 2)”. Unfortunately it wouldn’t load for him.
An hour or so later, Tim excitedly informed us that the adventure creator had suddenly loaded for him – but he had no mechanism of backing up. We attempted to back up using a 1541-Ultimate 2 from Andy Spencer (Retro Computer Museum) – but it wasn’t having it. So Tim very kindly agreed to loan the tape and manual to Games That Weren’t to preserve.
Thankfully after a few attempts, we managed to get both sides of the tape backed up and working and have also scanned everything in too. Here you can find the full archive, as well as an Archive.org link with the raw original scans. Tim has kindly now donated the package to the Retro Computer Museum, so it will go into their archives sometime in June 2025.
UPDATE: We’ve since learnt that it has already been preserved by Ready64, and it was part of a “Creator” series. So it wasn’t called “Creator 2”, but “Adventure Writer” (the title in the actual program is a bit misleading), hence why we didn’t spot it was already preserved ;-) . Hopefully the scans will be useful still :-)
Commodore Plus also did a great article about the Creator Spanish series (link below). Bieno tells us that there were 4 issues in total, in which the article mentions. In Spain, they only brought and translated the first 2 issues.
Many thanks to Tim Gilberts for the very kind loan and also to Andy Spencer for helping see the game fully preserved and corrections, Daniel Melendez for providing copies of the Spanish editions to add, Bieno and Strident for further information + providing downloads and information about its preservation by Martin/Stadium64 and Alejandro Conde for doing all the tape preservation for the additional downloads.
Just had a fantastic time at Zzap Live in Kenilworth over the two days with my friend Brian ONeill, catching up with lots of friends old and new (and a bit of gaming). Thank you everyone who came to heckle at the Games That Weren’t talk (and even kindly laugh at my crap Total Recall reference) and to Paul Drury for being a great wing man.
Well done to Chris Wilkins and the rest of the team of putting together yet another amazing event. There is now a video recording live at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlOGKwrN7uk thanks to Paul Davies (Back to 8-bit with Hermski). There is a surprise reveal for the Commodore 64 at the end ;-)
Thanks to Fliplift on the Lemon64 forums, a very rare promo edition of Rock Star Ate My Hamster on the Commodore 64 has been recovered. This was released through The Sun newspaper, and has been missing for quite some time, though a ZX Spectrum version has been recovered a while back.
According to Luca/Fire on the forum thread, Codemasters and The Sun ran a competition with ten runners up prizes being special editions of the game. The special edition includes 7 additional stars, with Kylie Minogue renamed as Koily Mynose instead of Bimbo Baggins. Continue reading →
Our fourth update of the year has yet more Commodore 64 goodness, and a bit more of a holiday bonanza with 14 new entries (including a stack of titles intended for the Commodore MAX). Also we have 20 entry updates that you can check out too (details of each update in the history notes).
Should hopefully have a nice surprise for you all soon too – watch this space and see you next month!
Our third update of the year has more Commodore 64 goodness in the form of 4 new entries and 14 pre-existing entries updated (check ‘history’ tab for details of changes). This includes the wonderful recent Codemasters recovery of Magnum Force, an early Ocean game that transferred to Cascade,recovery of the PHM Pegasus – Advanced Battle Disk (thanks to HOK/Remember) and a mega ton of development assets added to Mag Max V1!
Enjoy and see you next month!
Mag Max V1 asset scans added
Thanks to developer Sean Townsend, over 300 items have been added to the gallery, showcasing the development of the long lost Mag Max V1 by Canvas:
Video is now live of the recent Games That Weren’t talk at The Retro Collective. Hope you enjoy it and thank you so much to The Cave for hosting us. A fantastic place which I hope many of you will consider visiting and supporting!
Right under our noses all along! The long “lost” Commodore 64 Codemasters game Magnum Force has finally been fully preserved today thanks to Nostalgia, after being hidden on the Codemasters CD compilation and undetected for over 30 years.
Our second update of the year has more Commodore 64 goodness in the form of 7 new entries and 11 pre-existing entries updated (check ‘history’ tab for details of changes).
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.
