Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
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.
The source of this next entry is interesting as it was mentioned in "Illegal" pirate fanzine as something seen at PC 1988 show (or so it seems) by SSD of Cosmos.
World Darts was a game mostly known for its 16-bit release by Mastertronic, and a pretty nifty game which followed 180 from the C64.
We’re not really sure how far this got on the C64, or even if it was ever started fully. Was the above source correct or is this just vapourware?
Do you know any more about this game?
World Cup Football was advertised in Home Computer Weekly issue 85 (Well, briefly mentioned in an advert for other games) but was never released across its planned platforms of C64, Spectrum and Amstrad.
We assume it was to be some kind of management game rather than an action game, as Hill MacGibbon were known more for their educational types of titles. Could be completely wrong of course! :-)
Information is somewhat lacking at the moment for this one, and even World Of Spectrum does not have much information on the game apart from the advert scans. Hill MacGibbon did go on for some years, so was it a licence issue? Was the game by Five Ways Software?
Do you know what happened to this game?
Well, as correctly noted to me recently by a GTW reader, why the hell haven’t we covered World Cup Carnival V1??
And why not indeed – with the original game mess of World Cup Carnival apparently half complete before the internal problems and decision to refit Artic’s game instead we should really try and find out about this half complete version.
What really happened?… Was there more to it than US Gold were letting on? It’s now time to find out!
Well, thanks to the excellent The History of US Gold book by Chris Wilkins and Roger Kean, we learn that there was no first version of the game in production. Basically the licence was picked up, but there was confusion between Geoff Brown and Tim Chaney about who was organizing the production of the game. Once they realized that neither had sorted anything, they got Ocean on board to produce the game – or so they thought!
They were hoping that Ocean were to produce a title for them, building on Match Day – but it was kinda left without properly checking how things were progressing. When they found that Ocean hadn’t started any game and wires were crossed again – they frantically paid Artic a load of money to tidy up their old World Cup game and put that in the box they were about to sell. With the idea that the game was a bonus along with all the other goodies they had in the box. Nothing was given away about the game until it was actually released – and cue a lot of pissed off customers. It did some damage, but not enough to hurt US Gold too badly.
As a result, there was no earlier edition of the game that was too bad that it had to be replaced by a slightly tweaked Artic game. So there is nothing to find!
Therefore … its a case closed!
A mini battle game, and even though it looks like a type-in game, its quite addictive in its own little way.
It’s somekind of Combat clone, with a larger play area and smaller characters. It’s somehow very playable, just by shooting other tanks as many times as possible.
The only problem is that most of the levels are the same, apart from the night time levels, where there is thunder roaring away quite realistically, adding a new element to this preview.
For a preview, the amount of levels available is quite large, indicating not much more may have been needed. Possibly a new character set and graphics to improve things, and extra’s to collect and add new dimensions to the gameplay.
The game was actually completed it seems, just not properly sold or released. Why was this? Check out the full game for yourself, but we hope to find out more soon!
Dinky characters, nifty little game…
Although released, GTW has been given a lead which suggests that Wolfman was actually that little bit more gruesome, with an animated version that seems to have never seen the light of day.
The actual released version had static images throughout, but an animated version was apparently done which had a censorship certificate stuck to it due to some rather odd video censorship laws (Being a 18 sticker).
Didn’t the static version have this as well though?
The static version was released and reviewed (Without images??), but nothing more was ever seen or heard of the animated version. Maybe CRL ran out of memory and ditched the idea to have two versions. Very likely, but how far did this second version get before it was canned, thats the question…
Jay Darrett and Jayenne Montana had the following to say about it…
"Wolfman had no animation by the conventional sense which may be leading to some confusion or higher expectation – At the time of our/my first certified game Dracula (cert 15) Clem fought hard to gain a certification from the BBFC (British board of film classification) as the very idea had not been considered by them before. The BBFC were reluctant to issue a certification on the grounds that their current statute specifically mentions that to qualify under their remit the ‘image’ must be animated.
Although the actual reasons behind the BBFC’s decision may have run deeper, the reasons given for rejection (twice rejected in actuallity) were a simple solution away – as the c64 was not up to film-like animation and as the victims were dead therefore should not animate – so the solution came in the form of dripping blood c’est voila! animation. As we both know ‘dripping’ blood was still a long way from the c64’s capabilities, so bloodied areas of the image were overlaid with sprites that would x or y-flip to give the illusion of the highlight of the blood was twinkling in the moonlight.
All versions of Wolfman that were developed were released – including a version for the German market where red blood was banned by law and was re-developed with GREEN blood instead as were Dracula (the first cert 15 game) and ‘Jack the ripper’ (the first cert 18 game) too."
So it looks like this was a red herring, and hence its…
Case closed.
Wolfgrounds we believe is a text adventure game by the same people who were selling Exod (Another title we have just added to GTW).
The game was sold on disk, but it seems that this is one that either didn’t sell that well or never got fully released.
At present nothing of the game seems to have been preserved, so we are not sure if this is game that never got fully released or if it is just not backed up yet.
Can you help at all?
Wolf has been a game in the GTW archives for some time, only known for its Rob Hubbard tunes which have thought to be lost.
We did a bit of research but could find no other games of this naming and any link to Gargoyle games. Maybe Wolf was a working title, but its hard to find anything as a lead. Rob unfortunately did not remember anything about the game when originally asked back in the mid 2000’s
When speaking with Chris Abbott in 2015, we discussed a number of invoiced items that Rob Hubbard had done for the C64. Wolf was one of those for Gargoyle Games, dated 22/07/1987. Rob was very meticulous, and everything he worked on was documented on this list. Notably though, there was no Thundercats game listed – which raised alarm bells for me and kicked off an excited thread on Facebook.
Thundercats is a Gargoyle game, which was released in November/December 1987. The game is most noted for having a Hubbard tune which has no connection to the TV Series at all, whereas Mark Cooksey had created a Thundercats theme for Bombjack 2. Originally we thought that Sword of Samuari turned into Thundercats – however, although close with our assumption, it was in fact Wolf that turned into Thundercats.
It is likely that Wolf was close to completion by around September/October time, Elite saw the game and saw it was an ideal opportunity to re-purpose as a Thundercats themed game. Gargoyle no doubt had a financial motive to go go ahead and make the relevant changes. One thing that did not change though was the music – which Rob had already composed back in July 1987. This now explains why the tunes have no resemblance at all to the TV series. Tunes were already composed, they were Rob Hubbard tunes and Elite had no reason to get Rob to re-compose them. When this theory was posed to Rob, Rob confirmed that actually Wolf WAS Thundercats, and when he was contracted to do the ST music – he was made aware of the name change and asked to do a ST version of Wolf in a hurry before we went to the states.
Interestingly there could be quite a few remnants of Wolf in the game, which make sense now we have the connection. The mountain areas at the top of the screen seem to have indication that there could have been some kind of “moonlight” feature originally – which may have impacted on the game. Maybe you originally controlled a human, which could transform into a Wolf under moonlight? We checked the CVG preview for any remains, and there were sprites that never made it into the final game – which we have added here. The CVG preview also has slightly different SFX too. Could these have originally been for Wolf?
CVG’s Spectrum preview of Thundercats actually features a rather different looking character, which looks very human like – similar to the character from Tir Na Nog. It could be just a test character used in the preview, but maybe it was some kind of relation to the game originally as well?
Sadly, Roy and Greg do not like to talk about the old Gargoyle days and wish to leave it in the past – meaning that games like Wolf could still remain a mystery until possibly they may change their minds. However, coder Jon Simcox was not aware that the game was originally Wolf. He started straight on the conversion of Thundercats, and it seems that Wolf was only ever started as a Spectrum game. The C64 version hadn’t yet been started. Rob Hubbard was contracted to do the music for Wolf though, but this was quite early on.
So it means there is no early version of the game to find unfortunately, and the closest thing to Wolf is to play the released version of Thundercats. Case closed!
Now, as we all know – Wizball got a release and was one of the best games ever to grace the C64. It’s a fantastic title which you should check out if you haven’t already.
However, German magazine "Happy Computer" previewed what was a rather different looking game in their March 1987 issue. The Dashboard in particular is very different, as are the game graphics. Only the score panel and main sprite look familiar.
Thanks to Slator, we learn that the screenshot was taken from the article about Ocean software – part of a special report called "Soft story" and was not part of the normal game testing/previewing but about a visit at Ocean/Imagine in Manchester, where they showed the latest stuff to the magazine guys.
Andreas Wanda also kindly sheds some light on what the article was about:
"The article is an interview with Ocean operations director Colin Stokes, who has to field some deft questions from Heinrich Lenhardt in the beginning on why Ocean hit new lows with the recent trilogy of disasters "Knight Rider", "Miami Vice" and "It’s a Knockout". Stokes explains that they had essentially lost control over their freelance developers, who handed over their sub-par product when Ocean had already booked ad space and stores had already been taking orders. Ocean thus bit the bullet and released these titles to honour their contractual obligations. The forbidding expenses for these massacred licenses and, most importantly, the substantial loss of customer acceptance subsequently made Ocean do a 180 to focus on internal development again.
To prove his point, Colin Stokes shows off several triple-A releases being prepped for release, such as the "Short Circuit" tie in, "Super Soccer" and the arcade conversion "Arkanoid". Stokes elaborates on the latter, noting how much easier it has become for their in-house developers to convert arcade games because the original hardware can be fitted into a suitcase with a joystick port, allowing them to check on the real deal virtually whenever and wherever they like.
In between, Stokes touches upon a mysterious new release: "’Wizzball’ is the brand-new project by the ‘Parallax’-team. While the game is only in a very early stage of development, part of the graphics have already been completed: the player controls some kind of watermelon which hops and blasts across the screen. The scrolling is excellent." That is all this article has to say about the upcoming "Wizzball"."
Source for the scans can be found here, but you can also check out the scans here:
It is of great thanks to the guys at www.kultpower.de who have made finding the scans possible and are a fantastic resource for German magazines and the retro world!
We doubt that nothing will be found of the preview, but here it is for posterity. Just how different was the game itself?…. Was it just the graphics which were heavily tweaked, or are there gameplay elements which were taken out for the final game.
Interestingly, Slator believes that the mis-spell must have been made at this stage and it stuck in the minds of Ocean up until the mastering where the tape got stuck with "Wizzball".
Do you know any more about this earlier version?
Wizard War is a fantasy strategy game, designed and created by Lloyd Johnson with additional input from Jim Baen. The game was apprently released with an exclusive story written by Fred Saberhagen based on the game.
You controlled an army of swordsmen, archers and knights and travelled around a map fighting armies of ogres. Both armies had a single wizard whose spells acted as a sort of artillery.
A very nice sounding game, but one which is still at large and which is missing from the likes of Gamebase. Did it get a release, or is it just missing?…
Do you know anything about this game?
One of the harder things to ascertain when investigating a potential GTW is sorting out those games that are simply ‘Missing in Action’ from the genuine ‘Games That Weren’t’.
Wizard’s Dominion is one such game. A Dungeons & Dragon’s game from the early 1980s it was advertised as being released on the TI 99/4A and the C64, however today the only version that can be found online is the TI 99/4A version. The C64 version has dropped off the map entirely.
If the programmer is the same as the TI version, it was written by Thomas D. Johnson and boasts the usual dungeon crawl fare of swords, ogres, magic and ‘thousands of caves’.
The relative prevalence of the TI version online, where you can download two versions of the manual and buy the game on ebay (at a pretty high price) compared to the absolute absence of any reference to a C64 version suggests the game probably ended up unreleased, if it was completed at all.
Well, thanks to excellent preservation work by Hedning/Genesis Project – the game was found in a local Swedish loot of random disks in November 2016. The disk was dirty and anonymous and unreadable, until cleaning up the disk and getting it to fully read after 4-5 attempts. It seems the game was sold in Sweden by a reseller called Computer Boss International (see photo)
It is possibly the last existing copy of the game, and we’re very lucky to finally see it preserved. Genesis Project have also done a fully updated and fixed version of the game, which you can also find here!
A great find and a case now closed finally!
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