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.

Latest News and Posts

Andromeda 3

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

Another game, another title which was never really mentioned in the press – probably because this was a submission to a magazine, rather than a full commercial game it seems.

This game was discovered on a disk in Darren Melbourne’s collection, which seems to have been given to him by Gary Liddon. It was found alongside another adventure game by the same author – both of which seem to have been submitted to the White Wizard at Zzap 64.

In the game you are the captain of the Starship Andromeda III with a crew of 20 men and women. You are to set out from Earth to find the secret of the Dawn People.

Both games though are dated from 1984, which suggests they had been sat on for a period of time before the author then submitted them. Were they submitted for review? Does this mean they were on sale at any point?

Well, the author commented on the CASA website that the games were only distributed to close friends and never submitted for publication. He no longer had any copies, so these were possibly the last remaining copies of his game. Thankfully the author was able to see their work once more. See Creator Speaks for more details.

I’m not much of a text adventure player, but the game seems detailed enough with some good puzzles throughout. It is a shame that more people back in the day didn’t get to experience it!

We hope that some day the author will see his games and will get in touch to shed some light on them and we can finally close the door on this case. For now though, check out the games for yourself and see what you think!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Mountain Combaters

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

You may remember another entry called Beauty and The Beast, which was an unofficial licence of the Disney film, and rather oddly done within the Last Ninja engine.

Well, not long after finishing with Beauty and The Beast, the same team started to develop another game using the Last Ninja engine called Mountain Combaters. It was more of the same, with a different main character and story line – but with technical advances over Beauty and The Beast. The level graphics engine was done by Maham Samanpajouh.

We know little else just now about the game, and Maham is in the process of compiling what he has into executable form. For now, he has very kindly passed on a copy of the introduction sequence that was produced early on to give a glimpse.

In addition to this, we have a few screenshots which you can see seem to be heavily influenced by Last Ninja 3, or at least borrow some elements here and there. Overall, the game looks very interesting and we can’t wait to see more of it.

We should hopefully learn more soon about the game, but for now check out the intro sequence for a taster.

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Mag Max V1

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

Another day, another first version of a game discovered. This time we discover that Mag Max had an earlier version in production by Sean Townsend and Martin Calvert (from Canvas – the guys who did Highlander for Ocean).

According to Paul Hughes, who coded the eventually released version of Mag Max, Ocean were let down by Canvas for some reason and so Paul had to step up and do a very quick conversion.

It seems possible that the conversion shaping up was not quite up to scratch, and after the failures with Highlander – Ocean decided to bring it in house and salvage things. Although Paul Hughes suggested that Canvas did the Z80 versions, in fact they were done out house by Gary Knight (who is believed to have done the Amstrad versions as well). Mark Jones helped tart up the graphics in house before those versions were released.

It is unknown how the C64 version looked, as Paul never saw the game. Martin unfortunately didn’t recall anything of the conversion and sadly no longer has any of his disks.

Sean Townsend stepped forward in 2015 and confirmed that he was the developer of the game. The game was practically finished, and Sean believes that it was actually a pretty faithful conversion of the arcade.

He is unsure why the game was canned, but mentions that the version released was not quite as good as his original version. This is very interesting indeed, and it would be good to see it as a result (and maybe some day work out why Ocean didn’t let Canvas finish it).

Sean still had all the source code for the game in an Atari format (Sean coded on the Atari and compiled down a cable to the C64). GTW recovered all of this, but sadly the graphics and music assets are all missing at present and we’re unable to get Sean’s version up and running. Sean is hopeful that other disks may be found with C64 assets on, so that things can be pieced together.

In the meantime, Sean also sent over a ton of printed materials related to the development, including maps and character set definitions. We have scanned all of these in and you can find them below. Fingers crossed some day we’ll be able to fully recover Sean’s work.

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Industria 14

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

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?

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Arena

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

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?

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Dreadnought

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

Dreadnought was a multi-scrolling shooter being developed by Icon Design back in late 1988. The game was coded by none other than John Buckley of Solar Jetman fame.

The aim of the game was to control a fleet of ships which would be used to protect a large scaled dreadnought ship from incoming attackers. You would use a scanner to detect where enemies were coming from and then defend that part of the ship. Any damage gained would need repairing by landing on the ship’s runway.

According to John, the game was actually finished as far as he remembers. At the time though APS had a lot of programs cancelled. Additionally, Jason Brooke was put in to do the music and sound effects, and eventually his music was found around 2012 time. In 2023, Jason confirmed that this was his music and that it was indeed for this very game.

The first tune is said to be from a high score area, the second being a game over tune – and the next two tunes being for within the main game itself (likely title screen + in-game).

Although Argus Press were thought to be the publishers, we believe it was actually Melbourne House – who advertised the game very briefly. The advert scan we have added is from Issue 8 of ACE magazine from May 1988.

An actual preview of the game was thankfully leaked out, and shows most of the titling and one of the levels. We’re not sure if there are more levels tucked away, but the game very much seems like a quick budget blaster that was being done. The graphics look quite nice, though the game itself isn’t too spectacular.

Unfortunately the scanner feature actually crashes the game, so it suggests that this preview still had some way to go. According to the crack, the game was to be released shortly.

John no longer has any of his disks, so it may be down to finding one of the graphic artists and seeing if they kept anything from back then.

Plenty more research and finding to do! But for now, check out the preview!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Peace

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

Peace was a war based simulation game being produced in Italy back in 1984. It was flagged up to us by Fabrizio Bartoloni after a YouTube clip from an 1984 TV show Orecchiocchio was uploaded with a clip from the game (which you can see below).

The developers spoke on the show and then proceeded to demonstrate their game. The developers are known as Luca Milani, Marco Corciulo, Giulio Sala and Ostir Lido (?). We are unsure at present of the order of those credits and who did what.

The game itself looked very promising for a 1984 title, and had some good sounds and graphics throughout. We are guessing that they were trying to find a publisher for the game – but it seems for reasons unknown it never got one.

The game looked pretty much complete on the TV show, but we do not know for certain if they demonstrated a finished game. What happened to it though? Can it be saved from obscurity?

It is hoped that we may find and track down the developers who may still have it. It’s early days yet.

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 6 Comments

Hareraiser 2

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

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!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Combat 2004

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

Early days it may be as we attempt to find out more about yet another game that never was, we can in fact show a fair chunk of the game via some of its bitmap designs for levels and other bits.

Combat 2004 was only known about thanks to finding a set of images on Darren Melbourne’s disks in 2012. The game of course was to be a modernised version of the Atari VCS classic, with bitmap backgrounds and full colour tanks which could be moved around.

A tennis set level seems to suggest that there was plans for the ping pong based stages too.

Now we say its early days because we need more info about the game, such as who it was for – and who was doing the code and music. The graphics are some of Ned Langman’s early work before he did the likes of Silkworm and various others

It is believed though that the game never got beyond the concept images that we can see here – so it could be case closed before we know it. Luckily we have at least salvaged a glimpse of what might have been.

We hope to have more on this game very soon. For now, check out the screens below.

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | Leave a comment