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.

Latest News and Posts

Blitz

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

2000 Cyber Systems

Platform: Game Boy Color

Blitz was a simple Colour Game Boy budget effort being developed by Jamie Solomons (code) and with myself (Frank Gasking) doing graphics back in 2000 for Thalamus Interactive. This was opportunity for me to get work published properly on an 8-bit platform, being just a little too young to get something released for the Commodore 64 (which was the original dream!).

Level 3’s map

Jon Wells was one of the developers already at Thalamus who helped Jamie and I to try and break into the industry, and suggested doing a conversion of his Blitz 2000 title from the Commodore 64. This suggestion was taken on board under the development team named “Cyber Systems” which was my label for Public Domain games on the Commodore 64. Jamie Solomons was a recent addition to the team to handle the coding side of things, who was already doing a lot of Assembly Language programming on the Amiga at the time. Continue reading →

Posted in: Game Boy Color, Reviews | Tagged: , | 4 Comments

Game Boy Color dev assets

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

A selection of random bits of graphic (Frank Gasking) and code work (Jamie Solomons) which was done in early 2000 when the Game Boy Color was big and there was an opportunity to get developing for the machine.

These are just a sample, getting used to the tools before starting a varient of Jon Well’s Blitz 2000 game. The image of the man on a platform is from a test demo produced by Jamie Solomons, getting familiar with the Gameboy architecture.

Another space based background was later used as the basis of a level design for the Commodore 64 game – Sub Hunter.

Download CGB assets

Gallery

 

Posted in: Game Boy Color, Nintendo Game Boy, Prototype | Tagged: | Leave a comment

February updates for GTW64

Posted: by Frank Gasking

GTW64 has had a number of updates over the past few weeks, including:

  • Two ‘Nanosec’ entries added
  • ‘Splidge the snowman’ music found and added
  • A long lost 3DCK game found and released – ‘A Chance in Hell’
  • Entry added for CRL title ‘Cops and Robbers’
  • Entry added for ‘Gamma 9’ – a 1987 title that never surfaced.
Long lost 3DCK game - 'A chance in hell'

Check out the updates at http://www.gtw64.co.uk

Posted in: Commodore 64 (C64), News | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Paperboy (c64) un-used assets

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Thanks to Encore (Nothing to do with Elite I might add), a contributor on Lemon 64 – a range of unused sprites have been found tucked away in the game.

Ever wondered why so much was missed out of the conversion, well it seems the likes of the break dancing skaters were meant to have been…

Maybe they just ran out of space?… or just time whilst developing. This suggests that there could actually be some character based assets hidden away too, so if we find anything we’ll report it back here.

Continue reading →

Posted in: Commodore 64 (C64), Unused materials | Tagged: , | 4 Comments

Six Atari VCS games recovered!

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Copied and pasted directly from the post on the Retro Gamer forum, but pretty much says it all:

Six previously unreleased Atari VCS/2600 games that were developed by Jerry Lawsons company, Video Soft, are at last being released! The games were mentioned in press releases from the early 1980s and were long thought to have been just one of the many vaporware titles that never materialized. Not only do they exist in prototype form, but all were far enough along in development to be playable, with half of them considered to be complete!

Thanks to Jerry Lawson and the efforts of a few, dedicated Atari fans, the prototypes were archived, new artwork was created, and cartridges were produced. Each includes both a box and manual, and production is limited to 100 numbered copies of each title. Only 100 of each will ever be produced. This is the single-largest cache of unreleased Atari VCS/2600 prototypes to ever be released at one time!

Pre-orders are now being accepted, with carts to start shipping in late January. See the Digital Press webpage below for more information:

http://www.digitpress.com/library/videosoft/videosoft.htm

Posted in: Atari 2600 / Atari VCS, News | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Joe and the Serif (C64) preserved!

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Occasionally GTW64 is passed on software which did in fact get a release, but a very limited one and which has not yet been preserved for others to enjoy.

Joe and the Serif is one such game, preserved by a contributor called Pudva, this is an interesting game released in Hungary (May need to know some Hungarian to play the game :) ), which also saw a release on the C16/+4

You can grab a copy of the game here.

A big thanks to Pudva for digging this out, and Puchala László for the name correction.

NOTE: This was originally published back in 2011.

Posted in: Commodore 64 (C64), Preservation | 5 Comments