One more Channel 8 Software ‘Game That Wasn’t’ for the collection, I, Spy for Children was part of a slew of planned released by Channel 8 Software, several of which never saw the light of day.
Judging from the name it seems I, Spy for Children would have been designed to help children learn a vocabulary, probably linking it to pictures too.
As for why it went unreleased, we have no idea. Hopefully someone connected to the company can come forward and give us more information.
Thanks to Anonymous Contributor, we learn from C&VG magazine in March 1983 that it was at least initially an Atari-only release. As they point out – the mag was a multi-platform magazine, so no bias towards Atari releases, and granted, 1983 is early for C64 releases, so that version may have come later. They printed:
“Also new from Channel 8 is a children’s game of I-Spy which is aimed at the learning to read age-group. There are 10 topics in the text-based game, from which a child can choose to spy. Among these are I-Spy at the zoo, circus, farm, shops and high street. Like the children’s game, the computer gives the player a letter and asks it to guess what could be seen beginning with that letter at the given situation. It retails at £9.95 and runs on the Atari 400 and 800.”
Contributions: Anonymous Contributor, Stone OakValley (Scan)
More exactly, the program was sold as I Spy for Kids:
https://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-i-spy-for-kids_11530.html
For the record, this game was thought to be unreleased until a copy surfaced just four years ago. It wasn’t even available as a cracked copy before so it is insanely rare.