Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
Welcome to Games That Weren't!
We are an 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.
You all remember Reflective Designs and the various games produced and coded by Duncan Kershaw for Players, Zeppelin and Codemasters?
Well, we all have to start out somewhere – and Duncan first got into coding on the C64 by programming in BASIC (with a bit of machine code to mix it up). In recent years, Duncan has sorted through his work disks and found a number of his very early titles.
One such title he completed was a game called Charlie, where you must control a round blob that has to be moved to the end of a maze. It is sort of a Crazy Balloon meets Manic Miner game.
The game is sadly crippled by the lack of speed thanks to the choice of BASIC, which Duncan acknowledges, and possibly compiling it with a BASIC compiler could actually make it fully playable. But for what it is, it isn’t bad at all and well worth checking out.
It is believed that the game was only shared between friends, so this is the first time really that it has been made available to the public. Electra Software we believe was Duncan’s own made up label.
So here it is – check out Duncan’s early work for yourself!
You all remember Reflective Designs and the various games produced and coded by Duncan Kershaw for Players, Zeppelin and Codemasters?
Well, we all have to start out somewhere – and Duncan first got into coding on the C64 by programming in BASIC (with a bit of machine code to mix it up). In recent years, Duncan has sorted through his work disks and found a number of his very early titles.
One such title he completed was a game called Space Hop, which was a Q-Bert clone done completely in BASIC.
Sadly the version we had was corrupted somewhere in the compression. However, Duncan later ported a few of his old tapes and found another version of the game which pretty much works. However, it’s a bit fiddly to get going – you must load the first file in, soft reset and then load in the main game. Here there is a odd protection system in place, which can be bypassed by going into the BASIC code.
In early 2021, Gamebase’s Michael Plate very kindly patched the game up to get it working again, which you can now find in the downloads!
It is believed that the game was only shared between friends, so this is the first time really that it has been made available to the public. Electra Software we believe was Duncan’s own made up label.
Our next title in the archives sounds like it should be some kind of jet fighter game, but in fact Harrier Strike was a space shooter which was being written by Duncan Kershaw shortly after Steel Eagle. Originally it was to be called Stella.
Oddly too – but the game is tied to a story about battling against the “Argies” yet again. It seems a slightly confused game.
The game was being written for Players, but sadly at this time people were starting to get bored of space shooters and as a result it was decided not to release the game.
It’s an intriguing title which is mostly a rehash of the engine used for Steel Eagle and various others at that time by Duncan. But it is a nice finding, and seems to be pretty much complete apart from the lack of tunes/sfx by Gerard Gourley and System 6581 (we may find these at a later date). There are shops which you can go into to upgrade weapons and carry on blasting a wide array of enemies.
It’s a shame that no-one picked up the game to release, or even a magazine cover could feature the game – as it has meant rotting away on a disk for about 23 years. Until now that is – we are very proud to present the game for the first time thanks to Duncan going through his work disks.
You can now see for yourself what could have been yet another Players title by Reflective Designs.
Our next title is another title developed by Duncan Kershaw back around 1990 with his Reflective Designs company. As with Harrier Strike, the game seems to be based on the same engine as Steel Eagle. Duncan says that the game was lined up as a sequel directly to Steel Eagle.
Deep Star’s game engine features some enhancements and looks very polished overall. The parallax effects in particular are very nice. The game comes with a shop, just like Harrier Strike and Steel Eagle. But also the game comes with some thumping music by Mark Wilson. The music originally was thought to have been previously unheard, but it turns out the author of GTW cannot browse HVSC very well, and the tunes were already in HVSC since 1998 (ripped way back in 1997). Thanks to Ian Coog for confirming this!. The game had 3 levels (not 2 – thanks Dink!) in total produced with mid-level guardians to try and destroy.
The game was being written for Players, but sadly at this time people were starting to get bored of space shooters and as a result it was decided not to release the game. It was again offered to Julian Jones for his Fun Factory label in 1992 (which you can see from the letter to Julian). Fun Factory never quite got to release any C64 games though and Deep Star was laid to rest.
It’s a shame that no-one picked up the game to release, or even a magazine cover could feature the game – as it has meant rotting away on a disk for about 23 years. Until now that is – we are very proud to present the game for the first time thanks to Duncan going through his work disks. A huge thank you as well to Vinny Mainolfi who helped to turn off the originally defaulted cheat mode and getting the game to start from the title screen (which was hidden from the frozen preview due to the cheat).
iAN CooG has also kindly provided GTW with a SID rip of all the tunes from the game, and which you can grab from the downloads area.
Although it was thought to be a preview – it does seem that the game is in fact complete – with a game ending screen in place. Some of Duncan’s games were particularly short, and this was no different.
You can now see for yourself what could have been yet another Players title by Reflective Designs.
More from the creative mind of Duncan Kershaw – this time an impressive clone of Super Locomotive. It was more based on Tony Crother’s Loco game than the arcade original though to Duncan’s own admission.
This was being done roughly in the late 80’s by Duncan, and although coming on in leaps and bounds – Duncan didn’t feel that he had the coding skills to finish the game and felt it was too ambitious.
As a result, it was never completed and was laid to rest. It isn’t known why Duncan didn’t resurrect the game when working fully with Players – as it would have made a great budget title. It is possible that due to clones already out there by Tony Crowther, that it was decided not suitable to finish.
For almost 25 years – the game was left on a disk, until Duncan preserved it for GTW to show people for the first time. The game is meant to be playable, with the ability to shoot bombs and steam – but I wasn’t able to make the train move faster and progress. The game also looks brilliant with some lovely graphics throughout.
It is a preview and there seems to be no title screen at this stage – unless i’m missing something.
Although there isn’t much to do – it is a great showcase of a modernized Loco clone on the C64 which could have done well on the Players label. Another one which we can only imagine how it could have been if completed. Duncan does offer to pass on the source code – which means that maybe someone might be up for completing it. We shall see!
Next up in GTW64 is a title called Codename Desert Storm which was brought to light by its coder Duncan Kershaw.
The game was intended for release by Players in 1991 time, and was a sort of Choplifter game where you had to rescue Sadam’s human hostages. However, the war kicked off and the name had to be changed from its original name of Codename Desert Shield, to Codename Desert Storm. The hostages also were changed to downed airmen. Duncan suggested that the game would have been based on the Cobra Force game that he wrote for Players Premier.
Because of the war and ties, Players got cold feet and didn’t publish the title – despite the game being fully completed and with the changes. Duncan did later try to offer the game again to Julian Jones for his new Fun Factory label – but things didn’t last long and they never got to release any C64 titles.
After some searching through work disks, Duncan has managed to recover the full game that was offered around various publishing companies and has allowed us to release it. It has been sat on a disk for about 22 years until now!
So here it is! Overall the game is an average shooter affair and a little on the short side, but it is a full game with some unheard Richard Rinn music (iAN CooG confirming that the title tune is already in HVSC under Toccata in DEEK’s directory) as a bonus too. Ian has also passed on a SID rip from the game which he’s kindly allowed us to add with the downloads.
In the book, Bob mentioned that both David Jolliff and Jim Smart had worked on a original futuristic Ikari Warriors-type game. They were hoping to polish off the game whilst working on the unreleased R-Type game to get it sold to a publishing company.
This is all we currently know at present – but David took a break it seems from the industry shortly after the R-Type development problems. It may well have been scrapped around that time.
Early days, but we hope to learn more soon about the game.
A very quick and interesting entry which stems from the very last issue of Your Commodore magazine (Better known as YC issue 84).
In the news section, it was stated that Sales Curve had signed up an exclusive deal with Hi-Tech Expressions to do various educational titles based on Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, The Muppets and Tom and Jerry.
Slightly ironic that there was a Daffy Duck game by Hi-Tech Expressions you might think, but it is not to be confused with the Hi-Tec Software company from the UK. Hi-Tech Expressions was a US based software company.
Although the C64 titles don’t seem to have ever surfaced, a Daffy Duck game did surface on the PC.
Not sure as of yet if therefore the C64 link was just made up vapourware by YC magazine – which has to be said was a terrible magazine and hard to judge if much was serious in it.
But here is an entry any way until we find out more!
World Boxing Champ was a strategy based game to be released by Visualize back in 1994 and was advertised in their 1994 catalogue. But actually, it should have been released by Cult Software back in 1992. Cult had decided at this point to move onto the 16-bit platform, and as a result this game was not released.
Visualize was to resurrect the title and make use of the hard work. Unfortunately we never heard any more about the game either from Visualize and it was never properly released on the label (or on Supportware).
Luckily though, the game was released by Jon onto the Commodore Zone cover mount back in 2000 and so the game was saved for people to actually play. The game we can see was actually completed and ready for release and it was just due to poor sales of earlier titles that World Boxing Champ never got to be a proper Visualize release.
The game was developed by Michael Smith, with extra code by Jon Wells and some tunes by Chris Lightfoot. The quality of the game is pretty good and is very much like your usual Cult Software game, but with that added quality you’d expect from Jon and Michael.
We now hope to learn a little more about this game from either Jon or Michael in the future, but here it is for your enjoyment!
A quick entry until we get more information, but Wanted: Dead or Alive was a strategy/adventure game which was being advertised by Visualize Software in their 1994 catalogue for the price of £3.99. The game was set as TBA on its availability, so it is not known how far the game was.
We are also not sure if it was a standard text adventure game, or something a little more. Could it have been a text adventure version of Wild Bunch?
More information is required from Jon Wells at somepoint to find out more about this game.
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