Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
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.
A quick entry for another game being developed by Tony Gibbs. Tony will hopefully fill us in very soon with more information on the game.
Basically, all we know at present was that Bloo! was to be a Pacman clone and was started around the same time as Tony’s other game that was aborted – so around 1997 time
More soon as we find out!
Phantom – The Mission Remive was a remix of a SEUCK game called Phantom – The Mission that was created by Alex Aris and David Axtell back in 1988 on Commodore Disk User magazine. It was a pretty neat shooter which was enjoyed by many.
Alex and David produced their own remix of the game, but never submitted it to anyone.
Sadly Alex no longer has the game and has been desperate to find it. He believes that it was sent across Europe and as far as Australia – so it is hoped that it could still turn up.
Can you help us find this game?
Tanx was a SEUCK game that was created by Alex Aris and David Axtell back in 1989, and was an arcade adventure game (using paths to get trapped) where you control a tank sprite.
It was originally sent to Commodore Disk User, but sadly was rejected due to what the reviewers called collision bugs.
Sadly Alex no longer has the game and has been desperate to find it. He believes that it was sent across Europe and as far as Australia – so it is hoped that it could still turn up.
Check out the gallery for more bits and pieces that Alex had on the game.
Can you help us find this game?
Biz was a game that was written by Alex Aris back in 1989, and was based on a modified version of a game called Street Bomber done by Tony Rushbrook in October 1984 (Commodore Horizons).
The game was a Blitz clone that contained multi-coloured graphics, music created in Ubiks Music, a high score table and 5 levels in total.
It was originally sent to Commodore Disk User, but sadly was rejected due to a bug with the distance of the bomb from the space ship.
Sadly Alex no longer has the game and has been desperate to find it. He believes that it was sent across Europe and as far as Australia – so it is hoped that it could still turn up.
Check out the scans for more details, but can you help us find this game?
Thunder Hawk is a vertically scrolling shooter built by Steve Dunn, who did a number of games on the C64, including Call Me Psycho.
The game has been around the web for a while now, listed as being an Atlantis release – however it is believed that the game never actually got released by them or anyone for that matter. If we are wrong, please let us know and send us a scan! :)
It is not fully known why the game was not released, as Steve was paid for his work – though thought it strange that he never received a copy afterwards. The game features some fair graphics, though as a game it will not hold your attention for long. What is interesting is the use of passwords throughout each of the 20 levels.
Music is an early tune set by Mark Tait before he went to work for Tiertex we believe.
Anyway, until we learn more about this game development, here it is to download and check out.
Capitaly was a version of Monopoly for the C64 which was written by Andras Baneth.
Andras had also worked on an unofficial Viking Child conversion for the C64, but mentioned this Monopoly game which he had also worked on.
It is believed that the game was complete, and was another production done unofficially and not for any company in particular.
The game was mentioned in ‘Commodore Ujsag” (see scans), a hungarian monthly for C64 enthusiasts in issue 10/1991. Andras had won a national programming competition with the program (as well as a Morse alphabet program). This gives us the date at least. We hope to get a scan of the article very soon!
We will continue to update this entry as we recieve more information. For now, the search begins. Get checking your disks!
This is nothing to do with the Anco game series of the same name, but this particular Kick Off game was to be a conversion of the Jaleco coin-op from 1988, suggesting that this game was due for release around 1988.
The coder was Paul Black (Of Dizzy Down the Rapids fame) and the game was fully completed. It was Paul’s first ever C64 development whilst he was teaching himself assembly language, and was an unofficial conversion, with no contact made with any companies to try and sell the game.
It was literally saved onto a cassette tape and forgotten about.
We are not sure how good the game was, but it is hoped that some day Paul may recover the game and allow us to put it on the website for others to check out. It may be rough round the edges due to being Paul’s first piece of work, but it would still be good to save this interesting piece of work from Paul’s work tapes/disks.
More soon we hope on this one!
I’m not completely sure why we haven’t looked into this one before, but it was flagged up recently on the Lemon 64 forum about if a UK release of Victory Road ever existed.
So did it? Well between 1987 and 1989, Imagine Software advertised the game as being released for the C64, Amiga, ST, Spectrum and Amstrad platforms. Certainly all the other platforms got a release, including the ZX Spectrum version.
The C64 version however never seemed to get a review in any of the magazines. Although i’m sure I have seen a write up in the likes of CU or CCI on the C64 version, I could not find the said review – and am wondering if I have in fact just got mixed up with the Amstrad review in an issue of CVG? If anyone knows of a C64 review in any of the UK magazines, please let us know!
Interestingly, but nothing uncommon, but Victory Road did see release in the US by the infamous Quicksilver company who did the very poor Ikari Warrior ports, seemingly by the same developers. This was back in 1987 though, which suggests that it is likely that Imagine had their own UK version in development.
It is early days yet – but we began asking those at Ocean Software if they can recall anything of the development and if they really did intend to just re-release the US version. So far, no recollections at all.
Ross Sillifant found a snippet from CU (see scans) which suggests that Ocean had cancelled the C64 version. It almost suggests they had two versions cancelled, but they are most likely referring to producing a playable game, as the US version was terrible. So who was behind the C64 version?
In 2017, we recovered what seems to be a loading screen from the game which was produced by David Bradley. It was found by Dean Hickingbottom, but he couldn’t recall where it came from. It seems that Video Images may have been in discussions to handle the UK conversion of the game at some stage.
More soon as we find out!
A very quick entry which was picked up upon by browsing through Thomas Mogensen’s work directory in HVSC.
Within the directory was a tune labelled “My big brothers game”, which must have been a game being developed by Ole Mogensen. We at the moment don’t believe that this was intended for Prince of Darkness (another game done by Ole and Thomas), but a completely different game.
Thomas confirmed that the game was to be a Space Game with parallax shooting. This is all we know at the moment.
Watch this space!
A very quick entry which was picked up upon by browsing through Thomas Mogensen’s work directory in HVSC.
Within the directory are a large number of tunes for a game called Firefighter, which obviously must have been about firefighting. So was it a platforming game where you have to climb a building to put out fires? Was it a single screen game? Very early days and so little information at the moment.
We believe that the game was being developed back in 1992, based on the dates on Thomas’ tunes. The game was being developed by Ole Mogensen, who is Thomas’ brother.
Hopefully he’ll be able to shed some more light soon on the game.
DISCLAIMER: We are a non-profit digitisation project, aiming to digitally preserve software and history which would otherwise be lost for good. If for any reason there is anything that you do not wish to be on the website, please contact us for removal.
Games That Weren't® is the registered trademark of Frank Gasking.
