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.
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.
Zorro in Wonderland was a game that had a preview sneaked out many moons ago, but nothing was really known about it. Ruben Spaans in 2012 sheds some light on the game:
“This was just a “test game” I wrote because I wanted to try out a graphics engine similar to the old Sierra adventure games, and see how it performed on the C64.
I believe there is a release by Urine or something, there is no newer version of the game than that one, and no plans were made to expand on the game either.”
So that was that!…. purely a test game with no intention of there being more to it!…..
Along with Cyber Cop, Pedersen Systems were due to release this game on the Commodore 64 and advertisements listed it as so.
However, only the PC versions managed to see the light of day and the C64 conversions failed to do so. We got in touch with the game’s producer, and he sadly confirms that the game was only produced on the PC and never ported in the end for the C64.
A promising game from the once promising Cherry Software. Coded by Taboo, the style of game was to be a cross between Flashback and Impossible Mission.
The intro features a stunning 3D filled vector car driving around with fluid movement (Reminiscent of the Another World intro). Also it featured some haunting music by Shogoon and some nice graphics to match. I still remember being shocked watching the intro when I picked this up on a Binary Zone PD disk.
The game actually came to a halt when the development team went their own ways with other projects. According to the programmer, the game was very close to completion in terms of the engine, all that needed doing was the level graphics and designs.
A huge shame… Nothing was ever seen apart from the intro sequence, but GTW is proud to show you part of what the game was to look like. There are now some screenshots of the game’s main character moving around… and its VERY Flashback like!… Taboo kindly handed over all the game and its sources, but sadly these bits were lost a few years back in a hard drive crash, and are currently being recovered again from Taboo for GTW release.
GTW can finally now confirm that sadly no fully working version of Zone of Darkness is to be available in the near future, but we have been finding bits and pieces over the years. We exclusively released the Character test demo some time back, which allows you to move a very well animated Flashback character around a test screen… This gives an indication of how the game was to roughly play.
The game never really got to a playable state before it was cancelled. Some basic level design work was actually started, and Witold Bryndza found the disk with the artwork on after a 5 year search. See the downloads for an extra graphic disk with the 4 top files being executable and showing the impressive graphical asset work which was intended for the backgrounds. The game would have ran on a stock C64 without any enhancements.
It is hoped that some day we will learn the full story about the game and the intentions for it.
Trivia – Commodore Format once bizarrely claimed that the Zone of Darkness intro was an intro for a SEUCK game on their covermount called Road Course. Not entirely sure what they were smoking that day.
A strange name for possibly a strange game which was mentioned way back in Zzap issue 32 in their PCW show article.
The game was described as being a forced 3D isometric perspective puzzle game, but thats all we currently know. No other clues as to when the game was to be released.
The game did eventually surface on other platforms such as the Amstrad, and it was found to have been a 3D arcade adventure, and not really a puzzler. It looks pretty much like your typical Head Over Heels clone.
However, no information seems to show what happened to the C64 conversion, but Tigress Designs didn’t seem to last long. C64 conversions of isometric games could prove very troublesome, and Tigress might have had that problem with Ziggurat going across to the C64. Then the company could have also folded before it was too late.
Many possibilities, but no hard facts just yet… maybe you can help with that?
A rolling demo of what seems to be a Greek based game.
This slideshow shows various screens of the game and credits, including a piece of the interluding screen from the game.
It’s unknown how the game would play, but it seems as if the game would have been a flick screen adventure game
Graphically average, the graphics are slightly cluttered to make life confusing if you were playing. Just whom you would be controlling is anyone’s guess.
With a full set of credits in place, hopefully it won’t be too hard to find out everything about this game.
Another puzzler, and another game which I can’t make head or tail about. Fair graphics, but sadly I can’t find the playability.
Thanks to contributor Csaba Virag, we learn that the game was created by the Hungarian group Chimera, with code and graphics by Balázs Vilhelm (who also created Zaxon), with music by Chopter.
The music was apparently just placeholder, with final music due to have been created by Griff/Chromance.
It is confirmed that the game was never finished, and a preview (this one) was sent to Mr Wax of Chromance, but just published it under the label of Gulas (a fake label of Chromance).
Balázs confirms that he programmed the game and drew all the graphics, the music was the work of the team’s musician Chopter/Chimera. It never got any further than this.
The coder confirmed to Csaba that he lost his disks when moving home, so there is almost zero chance now of ever finding a more complete version.
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