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.
Plum Duff was a Christmas game being produced by Jason C Brooke, before he fully broke into pure music development. It was 1985, and after producing an unreleased music tool for Melbourne House in 1984 – he produced the Plum Duff game.
Binary Design started up in Manchester around Christmas 1985 and were looking for programmers, so Jason went for the interview, got the job and then Plum Duff was shelved.
Contributor Professor Chaos has found that the game was released by Bug Byte in 1985 on the ZX Spectrum, and pointed out that Jason was talking about his time on the ZX Spectrum. The game was never coded or started on the C64, so this is a closed case!
According to Commodore Format Issue 35, Test Master 2 was a game by E&J Software that was currently on sale and selling well at number 7 in the charts.
However, what happened to it? CF never reviewed it and it has yet to surface anywhere. Surely if it was at number 7, then it would have sold a few copies!
It is possible that CF had cocked up some how and had meant it for their news section – but no corrections were ever made. The original game was released back in 1990 by Challenge Software.
Do you know more about the game? … did it actually get released?
A very small entry for now unfortunately, and a well overdue entry too!
Back in 2000, GTW64 was in regular conversation with the late Martin Holland – who mentioned working on a game at MC Lothlorien called Choc-a-Bloc Charlie … an update of the original 1984 release they had. Martin described creating a loading screen for the game – though we cannot recall if he did any of the in game graphics.
It is not known who coded the game, though we are suggesting the original game’s developer or Paul Gill as a starting point.
Now, sadly we have actually seen the loading screen after Martin sent a video of his graphics work that he found on his C64 disks. The video got recorded over accidently, though Martin was to send some disks anyway with the work for us to preserve. He died shortly before this could happen, and his disks were thrown away.
The only memory we now have is of a loading screen which was similar to Panic Dizzy, with crates in the background and a main character at the front. So similar to this:
So the hope now is that we can find the coder of the game and hence find some of Martin’s work, as well as a game!
The game itself we know little about, and how much of an update it would have been. We asked a few people like Neil Thompson and John Buckley if they knew anything about it – and neither of them could recall it. So the search goes on!
Boom Software had a number of titles advertised in 1984 for the Commodore 64, including this game.
We know very little about this particular title apart from getting a very generic description from the advert itself. Compared to the other titles, this does not seem to have surfaced and therefore isn’t awaiting a preservation attempt.
Recently in June 2013, it has surfaced for sale on Ebay. We’ve added the photo of the sale item, but with a starting bid at £49.99 … might have to pass as no doubt it will go for a lot more.
“Losen your collar, get out your JOYSTICK and get stuck in. By the time you finish you’ll be exhausted.”
This is what describes our next entry into GTW64, which is an x-rated game being sold by Dept CCI called “Fantasy”.
There is little known about what style of game it would have been or is, something along the lines of Stroker? We don’t know. All we know is that the game was sold via adverts and mail order only.
We just need someone to admit they purchased a copy and see if we can get a dump prepared. We now know thanks to “TheyWereOurGods” that the game was actually released – and then in 2016, the game was fully preserved by Atlantis:
In Commodore User April 1988, a news item was printed which tells us that Robtek (Who did various bits of hardware in the day) had an arrangement with an American organisation called Key-punch, where they would get 3 film licences over the course of a year.
Robtek confirmed the first game they would release would be The Terminator, where the Amiga version was a cert, and the C64 version would follow in Autumn 1988.
Neither happened, and we can only assume that the deal/arrangement fell through or something wasn’t quite right. But was anything ever started on either platform, or was this just another vapourware title?
Interestingly another magazine title from the previous year suggested that Robtek had struck a deal to distribute a joystick from Denmark called the Terminator (see scan in gallery). Was it possible that Robtek were trying to see if they could obtain the name via another means to then do an unofficial game on the movie?
Zynon is another long lost game this time from Ian and Mic. It originally was not known what the game was about, but we can confirm thanks to Rob Whitaker that is was indeed the preview already in Gamebase: http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=8932&d=18&h=0
It was in an interview with C64.com that Ian and Mic told the site that they had done a game called Zynon which was unreleased. There was no other details apart from this.
Rob confirmed that he did some very quick graphics for the game, but it was scrapped by Ian and Mic for reasons unknown. It seems Ian and Mic passed it onto Bod to crack and release and all that exists is what is in the preview where the map finishes and you cannot progress any further.
In a temporarily leaked document from Charles Deenen, there was a release list for Maniacs of Noise, which had Zynon listed with “Reptilla Design” as the company. Co-coincidently, Jeroen Tel had a Zynon set of tunes in HVSC, as well as Charles Deenen – no doubt meant for the game! We have added this now to the entry.
With tunes added, it seems that maybe the game was meant for at least a budget release. Ian and Mick were writing the game, but just lost interest during its early stages and decided to scrap it and work on other titles.
What you see here is pretty much all that was developed. Case closed!
A strange name, but a very nice and colourful bomberban clone. Zwei Bereten is a two player bomberman clone, featuring some very snazzy and colourful graphics, wonderful titles and screens aswell for extra polish.
Sonically just as impressive too :)
Not quite as fast paced as the original classic game, but just as addictive, though the maps could be a lot better designed for more fun. Powerups are present to get more bombs and other things, and there are plenty of ghosts to try and destroy.
Graphic artist Marcin Mazur confirmed to GTW64 that the game was to be sold to Polish company TimSoft. However, the developers could not agree about certain things they wanted changed in the game, so they decided to release everything as it was.
This is why the graphics were not improved and everything else completed. What we have here is a preview version, but there does exist a version with around 100 levels. We hope to find this very soon!
A sad end to a promising title, which was kindly released in its final form.
Zrenite was a game worked on by graphic artist Wayne Billingham with a friend from school named Anthony Wilder.
The game was worked on after school for years, and finally it was signed up by Hi Tec in 1992. Sadly though it was just as they were about to release the game, they collapsed and Zrenite was cancelled along with titles such as of course Daffy Duck.
Zrenite was a two-way side scrolling SEU, with big sprites and some gameplay to make it a worth while purchase had it been released. It wasn’t the best game in the world, but it was a good strong budget title and would have surely scored well.
So although complete, the game has never surfaced. Thankfully, GTW has been able to uncover the game from Wayne’s collection. It isn’t quite fully complete as the end sequence is missing, so there could be more to find.
GRG has also fixed up the game and defrozen it, which is also included in the download along with the various versions of the preview. It’s a little unplayable because cheat modes are enabled by default in the game.
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