Games That Weren't^®

A very quick entry for a title we know very little about. The first we heard about Industria 14 was via Martin Holland, who said that he did the game for we believe Software Creations back around 1990. It is believed to have been one of the Light Gun games done for the Virgin Mastertronic pack that never made it.

From the sounds of it, it was a space related light gun game – however, no-one from that time has heard of the game before, so at present we have very little to go on.

Of course, Martin Holland sadly passed away in 2003 before we could get chance to ask him more about the game and no doubt would have had all his graphics from that time.

Thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni – we learn that a ZX Spectrum version was also cancelled and unreleased too. Written by a Peter Gough, who had done other titles such as Future Games, Ghouls n Ghosts and Gunstar.

It’s early days, but we hope to find something of the game – if anything in the hope of finding some of Martin’s long lost artwork.

Do you know any more about this game?

A very quick entry for a game that we know little of so far.

The game was briefly mentioned in conversation with Troy Miles who mentioned another game he was working on. All that was given was a cryptic description:

“Arena was kind of cool, but one dimensional. Might do good as a phone game though. It was like the fight scene in the original Tron movie.”

So from the sounds of things, Arena was a Discs of Tron game that never got too far. We hope to learn more about it from Troy in time, though sadly Troy no longer has any of his disks – so any search will be tricky.

Do you know any more about the game?

Hareraiser was a game based on the book Masquerade, and was sold with the aim of gamers trying to win a prize. A final game was produced called “Hareraiser – Finale” where it would help you solve the first puzzle and then help you progress to hopefully win a Golden Jewelled Hare or £30,000.

The game was released on the Spectrum: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0002239

But the C64 version has been very much at large – and we’re wondering if it was ever actually completed (the first edition does exist).

In 1989, Commodore User magazine had a quick news item to say that Haresoft had gone under and the assets sold off. So quite possibly the C64 version didn’t quite make it before the company went under. See gallery for the news item on this.

Well, in 2013 – Mat (Mayhem) Allen won an auction for both the games in the series for the C64, which confirms that the sequel was infact released – but just in very very limited numbers. Once Mat has confirmed the preservation of the game, we will close the case on the game. Photo added of auction photo showing the C64 game.

Then in 2025, contributor JazzGhostrider flagged up that the game has been right under our noses all along. The finale part is within the Gamebase 64 entry as a separate file, so here it is and a case closed!

Hero is one of the lesser known Mega Game titles which Imagine Software were to release back in 1984. The series was to include around 6 games – with Hero to be the 3rd/4th title being done on both the C64 and ZX Spectrum. Both Bandersnatch and Psyclapse were the two more well known titles.

Originally we only had the one entry for the entire Mega Games set, but to be honest – each game is worthy of its own entry. So we have the main Mega Games entry to cover all, and ones for each title that we know of which were due for the C64. The Mega Games entry in particular will talk more about the failed hardware add-on attempt to combat piracy. Here we will focus purely on the games themselves.

At present, we unfortunately know very little about Hero and what the game was about. It is early days, but we hope to learn more from the game’s supposed developer on the Spectrum: John Heap. Dave Colclough was rumoured to be C64 developer, but unfortunately we believe that he passed away some years ago.

Once we know more about the game – then we’ll be sure to update this entry!

Novasoft was one of those early development companies for the C64 which disappeared as quickly as they arrived.
I don’t think i’ve ever really seen anything to come out of the company.

As the game name suggests, Cyclotron was a tron bike clone for two players. Little else is known apart from that, apart from that the game was scheduled also for the Vic 20 (which also doesn’t seem to have surfaced). The game was advertised along with others by Novasoft, including a Jigsaw Assembler utility.

So did a few copies sneak out in some shape or form? Was the game actually ever started?

Very early days for a very early product from a very early C64 company.

Just after Evil Dead, Palace Software were planning a range of other horror titles according to a small news snippet in Commodore User magazine back in 1984.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre was another of those titles, but like with Halloween – it never quite made it and Palace went on to do other titles like Cauldron and Barbarian. The game was releasd on the Atari VCS, but by another company.

Just how far this game got, we do not know. We don’t even know how the game would have played either.
We hope to learn more soon about the game!

Shahid Ahmad was not a prolific C64 developer, having just a few titles released before he moved onto bigger platforms. He produced the stunning Chimera and Pandora games, as well as wowing Ultimate with his C64 conversion of Nightshade.

But Shahid really came to the forefront when he did the C64 conversion of Jet Set Willy for Software Projects back in 1984.

Shortly after the game’s release, Shahid was trying to work out if the games industry was for him or not. In the meantime, with a friend they started a game called Baby Starts Walking.

Essentially Shahid took the JSW code he produced as a starting point and tidied it all up. A friend supplied graphics and did most of the room designs. Just before finishing the game completely and including all the enemy sprites, they tried to sell it to a company (as of yet unknown, and which Shahid may not decide to name). They offered £3000 for the game, but it was turned down by Shahid and his friend – in hindsight a decision they now regret.

Sadly we may never get to see the game, as Shahid had all his work stolen back in the late 80’s – and none of his source code seems to exist any longer. But luckily Shahid has been finding various documents and designs for various games, and recently found a game map showing all the rooms for Baby Starts Walking – you can check this out for yourself in the gallery.

Maybe, just maybe, Shahid’s friend kept a copy of the game in an executable form … but its unlikely. A sad end to a potentially fun JSW clone, actually using the original JSW engine!