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.

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Kid Saviour

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Kid Saviour was to be a Giana Sisters clone by Roy Fielding, who did some music work and also did Hectic 2 back in the early 90’s.

All the hard work according to Roy was done, with decent collision, scrolling and sprite animation – but he never got to finalize the baddies or the maps/levels. It just had one test level overall.

Sadly Roy swapped his C64 back in 1992/93 and gave all his disks away with it, so the source is sadly lost. However there has always been faint hope that a preview could be found.

Mike Berry once had it, but sadly couldn’t find it. He has kept all his disks, and Roy sent him a copy of the test level many moons ago.

However, it seems the preview was finally uncovered by Joachim Wijnhoven in 2013. The preview was oddly discovered on a disk from Paul Kessels. Paul sadly cannot recall anything about it.

At first it wasn’t known what the game was, as there was no labelling, but at the end of the map – the map spells out “Toy”, which was the handle for developer Roy Fielding who did some work for CP Verlag. Paul worked on Blond Blubber, another unreleased game – which was meant for CP Verlag.

A connection was made, and it was established that this was indeed Kid Saviour. Overall, we have a very early preview – sadly not too playable … but enough with a main character that you can run and jump with. Worth checking out.

Roy confirmed that the title was his, and sadly this was as far as it got! No more was really produced, and he was surprised that the demo got out there.

Interestingly, an early Kid Saviour demo from 1991 was discovered in CSDB, which was complete with graphics from Hektic 2. Suggesting that Kid Saviour eventually turned into Hektic 2, or the engine was just used as a test (Though Hektic 2 came out in 1992!). We’ve added it to the archive for posterity anyway!

Well, we’re glad its saved and finally it is a open and shut case for this game!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

X-Men

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

X-Men was to be a licenced game based on the comic and released by The Edge, but it is believed to got caught up in the same troubles which The Punisher had hit.

Oddly, Ross Sillifant found a quick news article where the game is referred to as “The Uncanny X-Men”, where there were to be three games targeted with a focus mostly on Wolverine.

In late September 2021, artist Tahir Rashid got in touch to confirm that he was one of the artists on the game, doing some sprite work tests. He reveals in the comments that the game was to be a platformer. It is likely that the majority of his work was on the Atari ST version, but would have later been transferred to C64.

Tahir mentions that he did a character line up for the main characters as an art test to see how big they could get the sprites. He left The Edge about 3 weeks into the project, and as far as he’s aware – they pushed The Punisher to the front of development.

Had the X-Men development continued, it would have been coded on the ST by Glynn Kendall (who did Alien Syndrome ST with him, as well as Soldier of Light and Darius+). Glynn left shortly afterwards, so it never progressed much further.

The game was to be a platform beat-em-up, where you could swap in different X-Men to solve obstacles/puzzles and power up and smash parts of the levels. Ironically Tahir ended up working on Wolverine for the SEGA MegaDrive a decade or so later.

Tahir hopes to find something of his original concepts for us to add to the site, so watch this space. He is sure that he still has them. If you know anything more about the development (especially the C64 edition), please get in touch!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Hydrogenese

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Hydrogenese was yet another game to come from the excellent X-Ample, who produced many stunning games.

ASM magazine issue 7/89 had a short news feature that stated that Mario van Zeist and X-ample were hired to make games for Digital Marketing, followed by some information on both Hydrogenese and Bamboo. However, the BWB link was a red herring, and it was Joachim Fraeder who confirmed that it was X-Ample behind the game. Coder was Helge Kozielek, with graphics by Michael Detert and Thomas Heinrich. The sprites and backgrounds we later recycled and used in Parsec.

According to ASM, Hydrogenese was to be a shoot’em up similar to Armalyte or Menace and it was about four “heroes” with different strengths and weaknesses. The player could choose between these heroes and the task was to “clean up” the weapon systems of a space ship. The player was also supposed to also be able to remote control cleaning robots.

The original plan was to have a shoot em up section and then sections where you would have a full 4 way platform/scroller, like Hawkeye 2 (which Mario Van Zeist showed Helge how to do).

So what happened to the original game and why was it cancelled? Originally the game was planned to be part of a 25.000 DM contest by disk magazine “Game On”, but it wasn’t finished in time. As a result, Helge didn’t get to finish the game and it was split up into several other games and finished by other programmers.

Tales of Boon, Darksword and Greystorm used the jump and run levels. Parsec used some of the shoot em up levels, and Hyper Aggressive used the puzzle sequences and some of the music. Thomas’ music was split across many other games in the end, but now thanks to Se7en/Digital Excess – you can download the original music demo that Thomas produced.

Sadly it was believed that the original incarnation of the game was fully lost, but we held out hope that it would show up some day. Well in September 2024, that day finally came when Success + The Ruling Company recovered a preview of the game showing the stone level, thanks to CBA.

What’s more is that the disk recovered from a set of disks in Germany (possibly from an ex-X-Ample developer), also contained two previews by Thomas and Michael that were testing the parallax and platformer segments of the game which were likely re-used in Darksword.

It is a fantastic recovery of a game which was felt to be completely lost (apart from its inclusion in other games). It is possible that other levels could exist, and we hope that this may lead to more in the future – the screenshots we had before show a different level and slightly different score panel. As you will see from the preview, it is fantastic and a huge shame it never saw it to completion.

Check out Creator Speaks too for words directly from the author!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 12 Comments

Gunz

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

A small entry for what was to be a game produced to try and help the dying C64 gaming market and contribute something for people to play.

Being produced in the early 90’s, Gunz was a SEUCK effort where you controlled a tank and did battle against jets and other tanks. It was first brought up by Rohan on the Lemon 64 forum whilst recollecting about their Waking Dreams Software group.

A guy called Maverick was working on the game, and spent a few years on and off producing the title. According to Rohan, the game was rock hard! It was suggested that the game was to be used as a covertape game on a paper based magazine being produced called “Commodore Player”. As the magazine was never to be, the game never got properly released into the world apart from a few friends who were given a copy.

Unfortunately, around 1999 – the guys moved away from the C64 and on to pastures new. Disks were forgotten about and now the game is at large. Unfortunately Maverick no longer has any disks.

Rohan is still however in the process of going through his work disks with a fine tooth comb, so it is hoped that he may stumble across the final game (which he believes he was given at one point). It is hoped that some day this game could be preserved. Do you by chance have a copy?

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Trick Ramp Crazy

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Believed to be part of what was meant to be a “Crazy” series, Trick Ramp Crazy was to follow Combat Crazy on the Silverbird range.

It never surfaced, although being mentioned as a title for C64, Amstrad and Spectrum.

It is believed that the game was to be developed by Probe Software, but we know very little apart from this. The Bird Sanctuary describes the game as:

“A Spectrum skateboarding game, probably influenced by Atari’s 720 degrees coin-op and coded by budget stalwarts, Probe Software.”

Do you know anything more about the game?

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 1 Comment

Mutant Zone

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Mutant Zone was to be the sequel to Spore and published by Mastertronic back in 1989.

The sequel was a full 2/3 screen scrolling game which had a far right display panel (Top to bottom) consisting of multiplexed sprites. It was not quite as mental as the original game and described by it’s creator Paul Rogers as more of a “slow burn”.

The game was actually reviewed in ACE magazine and given a rating of 624, and was also planned for the Spectrum too. Sadly neither version ever got released for reasons that are currently unknown.

It seems that ACE reviewed an incomplete copy, as Paul suggests that it just needed tweaking on the game play – but everything else was pretty much done. It is not known why it was decided not to release the game! French magazine Tilt! also included a small snippet review, which said: “Piloting a tank, you have to find your way in a huge base while destroying many enemies. This software could have been interesting but is poorly made and the action is repetitive. There are way better “budget” games.” and gave it a B rating overall.

Paul is looking for the source code for the game, but currently cannot find it. We hope he’s more lucky very soon!

In the meantime, GTW64 did locate a game called Cybowormz which looks startlingly like Mutant Zone and the screenshot we have. Just look at the screenshots and the main sprite! It certainly feels Spore like too and the dimensions of the screen, bullets etc look identical.

Cybowormz was confirmed by Paul to be an earlier incarnation of the game which has somehow sneaked out. Mutant Zone will be very much similar, but with a lot more interaction and actual gameplay. The Cybowormz build is in a very early stage of development. Paul continues to hunt for remains of Mutant Zone, and we are hopeful that it will turn up some day soon!

For now, check out the review and a rare glimpse at the C64 version and a preview of a future GTW download we hope!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Reach For The Moon

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

A very quick entry for a surprise title which we never knew about until reading a snippet in ACE magazine about “Costly Games That Never Made it”.

In that list was a game called Reach For The Moon, which apparently had a 5 or 6 figure sum written off by Rainbird around 86/87 time when the plug was pulled. The game was a mega-project apparently commissioned from ODE (Oxford Digital Enterprises – thanks Merman!)

According to the article, the project may well have been the most expensive software cancellation so far (back in 1987 at least!).

We’re not quite sure what the game was – but the end of the article suggested that it was a Space Shuttle based game of some kind. See the comments thanks to Max, but it seems the game was actually developed by Magnetic Scrolls. A coder admits to being part of the Spectrum game – may have even been finished according to the person only known as “Deep Fried Geekboy”

According to Spanish Sinclair magazine Microhobby, March 1986 issue, page 4, the game was an Apollo programme simulation (not Space Shuttle) and was to be published by Rainbird:

“ODE is also working on a sophisticated simulation program for the Apollo landing on the lunar surface, which will be called “Reach for the moon”, which will be launched on the market next summer by Rainbird Software.”

Richard Horrocks got in touch and suggested that the game was well under way when he started at ODE. It has been suggested that David Pringle, Gareth Blower and Rik Yapp may know more about the game.

The game was dropped not long after Richard had started, with the entire team moving onto a new Trivial Pursuit game. Richard was an Amstrad CPC programmer at the company, before moving onto the Amiga.

The game did surface in some shape or form, with parts used in later games. One part in particular was the office scene used in “Yes, Prime Minister”. This was actually from an interactive office scene for the head of NASA in the game that was never used. Does that mean that Dermot Quin was the developer perhaps?

One theory by Anonymous Contributor is that the game Apollo 18, also a simulation game, beat them to it, both being 1987 games. Richard Hewison has also confirmed that the game was cancelled, and we hope to learn more details about its development in the future from Richard.

Do you know anything more about this game?

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 9 Comments

Basket Master V1

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

ACE magazine issue 4 had a pre-production screenshot of Basket Master from Imagine and Dinamic which looks pretty different to the final version we all know from Gary Biasillo.

We’ll ignore the fact that there are no hoops just yet, but focusing on the players – we can see that there is a little more detail compared to the final version – with what seems to be hi-res overlays.

The floor is also a little more detailed and wooden based – so overall it is very different to the final version. This suggests that maybe there was a different version in production, or Andrew Sleigh was brought in later on to replace a graphic artist who had to drop off the project.

Gari confirmed to GTW64 that he did indeed do this earlier version, but just had evolved over time. Graphics may have been changed due to issues with the code early on. Gari soon hopefully to confirm!

Do you know anything more about this version?

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 6 Comments

T-Runner

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

T-Runner was described by its preview snippet in ACE magazine (issue 4) as being a Marble Madness-type arcade adventure, set on a Marines training platform in space.

After 300 years of lying idle, the central computer has gone haywire and its all up to you to sort it out…. Well, it would have been had the game actually been released. The Christmas 1987 release date didn’t quite happen!

It seems that unfortunately this Nexus Productions game got caught up in the folding of the company at the end of 1987 … meaning that we would never get to see this promising sounding game.

Unfortunately no other company picked up the game from the remains of Nexus, and so the mystery of the game lives on.

We do not yet know who the developers were behind the game – quite possibly it could have been Paul Voysey or Tayo Olowu. Hopefully they may come forward and shed some light.

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Xecutor

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Xecutor is a pretty good vertical scrolling shooter which was released by ACE software (a sub company of The Edge) on the ZX Spectrum towards the end of 1987.

The game was planned for release on the C64 just a month later – but never surfaced, and so another entry gets added to GTW64.

Clearly from the advert and also ACE magazine review, you can spot the C64 mention in the list of formats.

So what happened? At the moment, we do not know – and there seems to be no other mention of a C64 version anywhere apart from the ACE spectrum review and the advert itself.

Do you know any more about this lost conversion?

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