Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
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.
Pigs on Marse was an interesting looking RPG which was advertised back in Ahoy! in March 1985.
The game was highlighted to us thanks to Matthew Goode who got in touch and supplied a scan of the advert from the magazine. It looked an interesting product, coming with a 100 page cartoon book to help you complete the game. The pig theme of the game looked very interesting game too, possibly making the whole thing a lot of fun.
But what happened to it? Unfortunately nothing of the game has surfaced so far, which suggests that the game never actually got released. Or did it in limited form?
It’s early days, but do you have this game? … and can you help us digitally preserve it if it did get released?
Or did you work on the game and know why it didn’t get released? Steve Rogers – are you out there?
Was it too ambitious to release with the 100 page cartoon book? Marsoft sadly never released any other games, so it is possible that they just ran out of money.
Help us find out more about this interesting sounding RPG!
XS was a game being developed by Graham Hunter and Paul Docherty in 1987.
The idea was to be a Defender based game, with a fast side-scrolling shooter where you rescue civilians from sewers and street scenes whilst shooting aliens.
Unfortunately nothing ever properly got started, and after some differences of opinions in the Pulse group – both Graham Hunter and Paul Docherty left to form Radix.
Paul suggests that he isn’t aware of anything being started apart from graphic mock up ideas – so we hope to find Graham Hunter to confirm more.
For now, check out the mockups of the sewer level which were used in a demo by Radix called Peace on Pulse.
The While Dragon was a game being proposed by a guy called Sean Huxter. It was hoped that it would be proposed to Epyx Software back in the early 80’s as a sequel of sorts to Dragonriders of Pern. Sean believes that the game would be a lot more fun than the original version that Epyx released.
The game would control which screen he has to go to, some mockups included a Firestone Pit (for refilling a dragon), Map room (for chosing which region to go to in a fight thread) and Egg Room (where oldtimers would occasionally steal a queen egg).
The mockups show Pern environment screens. Thread would fall on the land, and if it touched it, the land would turn black. When a whole land block was deadened, it would be lost, and no longer accessible. Your dragon would fly over the land, flaming thread, Joust-like.
Overall the mockups look pretty impressive for their time, and it is a shame that Sean didn’t get to submit his creations.
We hope to hear more from Sean soon about this game and if anything was ever sent to Epyx. For now, check out the game mockups until we learn more about this entry.
3-2-1 was a popular quiz show in the UK during the 1980’s, hosted by Ted Rogers with a strange side kick character called Dusty Bin.
Many games coming out the time were tied into various films and TV shows, and even 3-2-1 got into the act with their own game. The game was only available via mail-order from a company called Micro Computer Incorporated, and gave you the chance to win lots of prizes just the like real thing. The star prize being a week’s holiday in Spain.
To win prizes, you would have to play the game then download your score and send it to the company. According to the few magazine snippets at the time, the concept was secure – but of course no doubt people would have exploited it.
So what happened to it? Well initially it hit some troubles getting passed through, but it eventually surfaced on the ZX Spectrum – with an auction for the game recently found. However, it doesn’t seem to have been preserved just yet. The C64 version though is completely at large and no information could be found on the title from initial searches. Although the magazine snippets talk of a C64 version, the box screenshots only show “For all Spectrum users”.
Did it ever get to production on the C64, or did the early flop on the Spectrum prevent it ever going to market. Do you know any more about it?
Well, it seems it was released – and there is a C64 game in the Retrocollector archives, yet to be preserved. Hopefully soon it will be made available!
Now I have to say that i’m very surprised about this entry, considering I grew up with the Vic 20 version of this fun little game. However, i’m a little sceptical to whether this was merely a mistake by the reviewer. We shall see I guess!
Race Fun was a very simple up scrolling game by Rabbit Software, where you had to simply pass as many cars as possible and not crash. Nothing more to it than that.
The Vic 20 review in Commodore User magazine suggested that the game was “Much better than the 64 version”. Nothing of a C64 has surfaced though, so what exactly was the reviewer playing? Were they getting mixed up with another title?
Star Traders (working title) 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 Star Traders 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.
Star Traders was confirmed by Marc Wilding to be a mix of the Activision game Star Raiders (hence similar name) and Elite. It got to a very early stage with the ship flying through a starfield and with a early menu system.
Marc Wilding has confirmed that he has sprite drawings, design documents and also the entire remaining source code for the game – albeit, printed out on huge sheets of A3. It is hoped that maybe a project could be set up to preserve this material and maybe even get things running again. Not an easy job, but one we hope that Marc will be up for in the future.
Cyclone was to be a helicopter game released by Ocean Software in the UK back around 1985. It was produced by Tony Pomfret shortly after Hunchback 2 was released.
The first we hear of the game was from Martin Galway in an interview with C64.com, that the Ocean Loader 1 tune was meant to have been used on an unreleased game called Cyclone.
After a bit of digging, we found that Cyclone eventually was released as Helikopter Jagd, but not in the UK! It was only released in parts of Europe under the Quelle Soft label. Essentially the same game, but just with a title screen and name change.
It was revealed in Retro Gamer recently in 2020 that Tony Pomfret was asked to convert Vortex’s Cyclone to the C64. He thought the game was a bit shit, so decided to make his own game based on an earlier title he produced before joining Ocean called Bushfire.
It seems the deal for Ocean to release Cyclone fell through or something, as Vortex released the game themselves, and Ocean only released Tornado Low Level. The game stalled, and was eventually renamed as Helikopter Jagd and given a limited release.
Some theories so far are that the game was actually originally to be the Ocean conversion of Airwolf, before Elite got the licence. If you look at the title screen, the helicopter is almost identical to the one in the Airwolf adverts that Ocean released. Another theory was that the game was simply not good enough and was sold off to make a small profit to Quelle Soft to launch. Tony has mentioned no link to Airwolf, so this can be dispelled.
We believe there is still a story to tell with this game, even though a release was actually made. What happened to the UK release, and what really was this game mean’t to have been? Hopefully Tony will shed a bit more light some day.
A very very quick entry which was first mentioned in a Maniacs of Noise release list by Charles Deenen.
Trucc was scheduled to have a tune composed by MAD (Marcel Donne), but it seems it never happened. The game was listed as being by BWB, which was Boys Without Brains.
Could this have been referring to Super Trucker? … We are not sure, but hope to find out more soon!
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.
Basket Case 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.
Just how far this game got, we do not know. We don’t even know how the game would have played either.
Now then, Mr Chip Software treated us to some brilliant C64 games – the Kikstart series, Humdinger, Super Scramble and many more. Of course along the way there was bound to be some casualties, and Speed Sprinter is one of them.
Speed Sprinter as you may have guessed was to be a car related game, top down and very much like a modernised Last V8 type title – even featuring graphics inspired by the game. The game was to feature a shop where you could buy materials for your car and do various upgrades. There were also a large number of tracks to play on. The game was being coded by Shaun Southern and graphics done by Andrew Morris – no doubt Shaun would have done the music too.
Basically Speed Sprinter was what eventually became Super Cars on the Amiga, and was the base idea. As Mr Chip turned into Magnetic Fields though, both Andrew Morris and Shaun Southern decided to move onto the 16-bits, not seeing a future left with the C64 any longer. Speed Sprinter was shelved, and ideas went into Super Cars which was released on the Amiga to great acclaim.
Many years later, Andrew Morris got in touch with GTW64 and offered to loan us some of his disks in the hope of preserving his work. In one batch we luckily managed to find most of the graphics for Speed Sprinter, though sadly no executable of the game itself.
We hope that Shaun may still have something of the game that he is willing to share – but Andrew suggests that Shaun probably will no longer have any of his disks. For now, you can get a good glimpse of how the game would have looked. If you imagine the Super Cars game play with those graphics, you will get a good idea of how it may have played.
In time we hope to get the course maps accessible, but we’ve included them in the assets download which Andrew has very kindly allowed us to put up. More soon on this game we hope, including input from Shaun himself!
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