Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
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.
A very quick entry, and probably not one to take too seriously!
This was mentioned by a chap called Duncan Lyons from Stockport back in Issue 20 of Commodore Format. He wrote in to the letters pages saying that he wanted to design his own game called The Ninja Eggs and was after someone to market it.
It was likely just a young lad who was hopeful of getting into game design, and nothing was ever started… but maybe there were some plans for the game drawn up. Did Duncan ever get round to sending off his ideas to any of the publishers at the time?
Well Duncan got in touch with GTW64 in 2014, and confirmed that the game was sadly never produced. But it sounds like a series of sketches and cartoons were produced, which we may get to add to the site some day. It seems it could have been a game, but Duncan didn’t quite have the support to bring it to fruition. Maybe someone can help him?
A recent article on Interceptor Software in Retro Gamer magazine (April 2013) states that there was another version of China Miner that should have been released.
It was the very same game by Ian Gray, but also had the inclusion of speech (like Tales of the Arabian Nights did). Richard Jones had gone to Holland to meet with a young coder who had claimed to have written some speech code for the C64. Impressed with the code, Interceptor put it into China Miner and paid the developer a significant sum.
The game had been out there for approximately 2 months before a cease and desist was made from a company in the US, who said it owned the algorithm. As a result the game was temporarily pulled and replaced with the version we all know well.
But what is significant is the 2 month shelf life of the game, and yet there seems to be no version of it online at present with the speech intact. Maybe you have a rare copy of the game? Let us know if you do and if you can make a dump of the game.
It seems that this is another Chiller V1 sort of game – just a piece of preservation to try and make. Maybe you
Our next GTW entry comes in the form of Honest Joe, a game by Bubble Bus Software and advertised in a Bubble Bus catalogue from around 1985 time. The game was also due for release on the BBC Micro.
The game in the advert was described as follows:
“Honest Joe – The getaway after the bank raid went terribly wrong and in the panic the robbers scattered their money bags. Luckily Honest Joe heard what had happened and set about recovering the money and returning it to the bank. Machine code, 3D graphics including mazes, tunnels, rivers, etc…, etc…, smooth fast action and realistic sounds. Joystick or Keys.”
Sadly the game never surfaced and nothing more was ever heard about the game itself.
It was thought that the game was the very same “Honest Joe” game that was released on the BBC Micro by Beebbug Software, but it is in fact a very different game about trading cars.
At the moment, apart from the vague description – we know little about the game. Was it a flick screen arcade adventure? A simple maze game with a bit of 3D thrown in? We do not know just yet, but hopefully in time will learn more about this game. Was Richard Clark involved?
A very quick entry for now thanks to Robin Gravel for his research work. We learn of a C64 version of this Spectrum and Amstrad game thanks to an inlay which lists C64 loading instructions and also credits for the C64 version of the game.
As mentioned – the game saw release on both the Amstrad and Spectrum back in 1989, and was a neat and simple arcade platformer … though what ever happened to the C64 version?
So far we know very little about what has happened to the game and how far it got (if ever started). The coders listed we have not heard of before – was this to be their first game? Did they get stuck?
Another title recovered by Jason Kelk which was being coded by Alan Jesse (of Quantum fame).
This title was being developed by Alan shortly after completing Quantum, and was to be a similiar style of puzzle game.
The idea is to control a bouncing ball by toggling arrow tiles (changing distance, not direction – an interesting twist!) and making the ball bounce onto various items. A lot more was planned for the game, which Jason cannot quite remember, but the game was sadly canned due to school taking priority for Alan.
We are happy to bring you a preview, which contains a few levels that you can take a look at. It is playable to a degree, but at this stage you don’t actually have to collect anything and can move on by going off the edge.
Overall, it is a very promising early preview – and could well have been a fun puzzler had it been completed. Certainly the ball animation and graphics generally have a lot of promise. Maybe some day Alan can shed light on what more was planned for the game!
Our next entry (helping to fill up the rather empty X category) is a neat early preview of a Delta’esq clone called Xykik.
The game was being developed by C64 musician Jason Morrell, of which this was his first venture into game development.
Things started as a simple attack wave handler, sprite recycling for the landscape and a status panel … as well as a neat Delta style star-field (which was worked out between Jason Morell and Jason Kelk, rather than looking at Stavros’ code directly).
It seems that the game never got much further than this early preview, which we can thankfully bring to you for the first time thanks to Jason Kelk. We need to find out more about what happened, so hope to hear from Jason Morrell very soon about his work.
For now, check out the early preview and nice effects in a game which could have been a neat budget blaster…
Not a conversion of the Sega Master System light gun game of the same name, but another title by Jon Wells which was to be released by Visualize – but didn’t quite make it.
I almost forgot about this one – but a mention found of it in Commodore Format whilst doing some research got me remembering about it being one of Jon’s games.
We couldn’t quite remember what the game was about, but Wayne Wormersley suggested it may have been the Airwolf style game that Jon was working on at the time.
Jon in 2013 at the Play Expo confirmed that the game was indeed inspired by Airwolf, and had you having to land and rescue people on an alien planet. The game got to the stage of having you control a space ship which could fly around a basic map, and featured a simple score panel. At this stage though there were no collisions or real game play elements in place.
Sadly as poor sales continued, the game was caught up in Visualizes’ demise and was scrapped. Jon has offered to do screenshots in the future to show us what might have been.
Remember Hoppin’ Mad by Elite? That game where you control a set of bouncing balls across a landscape? Well Vicious Circle was to be a similar sort of game, with a larger ball and only one of them – bouncing around various obstacles (with right to left scrolling) and shooting various enemies.
The title was being coded by a chap called Alan Jesse, who worked on a few games that never quite made it – including a game called Quantum – which eventually got a release on Commodore Zone magazine.
The graphics were also done by Alan, but some (including the loading screen) were done by Jason Kelk.
Luckily this particular title from Alan got leaked out to the world many years ago, and so we can present a download option for you to check the game out. At this early stage, it isn’t completely playable – but there is a show of promise with a nice game engine taking shape.
Sadly it seems the leak is what killed the game, which upset the developers. It had been originally banded to various budget labels at the time under the Bigtime Software label, but sadly without any joy.
Jason suggests that there was a later version which had more variety, a bigger selection of weapons – but its not clear if Jason has a copy of it. Maybe some day we could see more of this game.
Could it have been a fun and thrill filled budget title back in the day? We’ll never know!
Speed Trap was a game being written by a guy called Alan Jesse, who also wrote a puzzle game called Quantum (released on Commodore Zone magazine) and also worked on a Trailblazer game that never saw the light of day either.
Since Alan, Jason Morrell and Jason Kelk were avid readers of Zzap! and hanging on Martin Walker’s every word in his Citadel diary, they tried to implement some of what he was talking about. Speed Trap was Alan’s way of looking into the idea of tile compression – getting large areas of the screen scrolling at speed and handling movement similiar to the tile by tile system described in Walker’s Way.
Things didn’t get very far at all, and just an early piece of code was built to test things. It is possible that a later preview exists with a sprite and a couple of tile-based collisions, but there was no music started that Jason Kelk was aware of.
The game was ditched when sixth form college and higher education called, and meant that Alan no longer had time to code. You can check out the remains for yourself, and wonder just what might have been!
A very quick entry which we will properly flesh out over time. But this was a Spanish arcade action game which was based on a cartoon of some kind. The game was split across 4 areas, including a Disco, Beach, Ship and an Acid House.
We are not quite sure why the C64 version never surfaced in the end, but hopefully will find out very soon! One thing we believe is that the game had ported graphics from the Spectrum.
Thanks to MT153, it seems the game was actually printed in a magazine as both BASIC and Machine code. We attach the magazine here, but maybe someone would fancy having a go and seeing if this is indeed the full game? It could be a nice title to recover!
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