Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
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.
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!
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:
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