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.
At present we know very little about the game and there seems to be no information on the web about it. But was this game infact "Shoot Out"?
Do you know any more?
GTW presents what could have been very similiar to Newcomer… and it seems that this game was the reason for its demise.
This game is an unfinished Hungarian RPG, which was started in 1992, and cancelled in 1994 as the team felt that they could not compete with the Newcomer game which was in development at the time.
Very unfortunate, though the programmer on his website has left the game open for discussion, and asks the userbase if people still wish to see the game… http://www.freeweb.hu/bithunter/vandorlasok.htm
I don’t feel that the game will ever be completed, though it would be nice to preserve what remains and allow people to see what could have been. At the moment no contact has been made, as there is a language barrier present.
Hopefully Viktor will help us get in touch, and also translate some of the documents on the site which explain the game and its concept it much greater detail.
Its very early days with this game, but a very interesting one from the shots which are now online…
Interesting RPG from Hungary…
Trying to improve on their abysmal "Micro Machine" game, Patriot Games tried their luck with "Wabbit".
Sadly, this just makes things worse. With a simple hi-res bunny which jumps across the screen (Though animating nicely), while you take aim and try to shoot it.
The target is hard to control, and all you do is shoot the rabbit as many times as possible to let your points go up. Nothing original at all, and not very playable.
Graphically overall very poor, and lacking a lot to make it a popular game. Music is good though, but thats about it.
Maybe Patriot did a later version with much more, but until we find and ask them, we may only be left with this poor game.
Not the best game ever… beaten just by Groovy Garden…
Worron is a rather bizarre little title, which was never advertised, and only came about thanks to Richard Paynter getting in touch to shed some light on the title. Rick signed a contact with Firebird in October 1987 to complete this particular game, and this was written about a year or two after winning an Elite competition, where Richard had met Colin Fuidge (who presented his award).
The game itself was a top down Sabre Wulf style game, with a hint of platform action mixed in according to Richard. Bas-relief graphics were used to good effect to give the perception of depth going into the screen. For instance, you could only run over platforms when they were at the correct level. The game also included some jazzy parallax scrolling and all kinds of nice little features. Apparently, Mark Greenshields was so impressed with the scrolling, he borrowed the routine for one of his games.
Everything was signed off with Firebird, and the game was delivered about 2 weeks later. Richard also got an advanced royalty cheque too – but that was it. Richard went to work with Paranoid Software for a bit, before then going off to University. Throughout that time he never saw Worron appear in the shops.
Thanks to Richard Hewison’s investigations, we found out that Colin Fuidge (who had signed up the game), had been drunk when he originally agreed to sign the title, and when the final version turned up – he didn’t like it. With work going on with setting up Silverbird, the title was put to one side with the hope of maybe trying to rescue it. When it was side-lined though, it was completely forgotten about. So that is why it never got to the shops!
When we asked Richard for a copy of the game though, he sadly had no longer kept any of his disks. The likelihood of ever finding it even from an ex-Firebird employee was looking bleak. Until that is we received a last batch of Darren Melbourne’s disks in December 2015 – where we were happy to discover two builds of the game, including the version sent to Firebird!
Although the game is well presented and (to be fair) is an early effort from Richard, we think that Colin was right that the game wasn’t quite there. It has lots of promise, but there are a fair few things broken in the game which don’t make it too playable overall.
What is odd, is that although the game seems to be mostly complete (with an ending screen) – it doesn’t seem to match the descriptions that we have heard about the game. It also does not include any sound, apart from on the high-score table. Is it possible that we are missing a slightly later version? Richard confirms that there may have been a slightly different version, where you could interact with the holes that appear in the ground – but its pretty close to the final version created. There was never any sound in the game, apart from the high-score and it was for Firebird to add at a later date.
Richard was amazed to see his game again after so many years, but the fact that the game was never quite seemingly in a finished state in 2015 had bothered him. In early 2021, Richard contacted GTW once more to say that he was busy working on finishing off Worron and polishing it up a bit. Then in May 2021, he got in touch again to say that he was done.
Amazingly, Richard has painstakingly decompiled the original code that GTW had salvaged and then carried out the following fixes and additions (which we have copied directly from Richard’s rundown):
Essentially, Richard has made sure the game can now be completed without bugs, and feels its pretty stable now and as complete as he’s prepared to make it. One thing to note is that he didn’t want to make the game better or easier to play, and states that it is what it is. There were just a few things at the time missing that were an itch to Richard that needed to be scratched.
So here is the very final edition of Worron in a now full game and complete state. Shortly afterwards, he kindly also provided a copy of his development diary, which is an amazing 103 pages and chock full of technical detail of how he put everything together.
Additionally, in August 2021 – Richard kindly passed on the music he produced for Worron before creating as a SID version for the game. Here is what Richard had to say:
“Hi Frank – something you may or may not want to add to your site is that I mocked-up the Worron music in Logic Pro before adding it to my music routine – it’s pretty much the same music albeit without the rapid SID arpeggios:
I’ve also included screen shots of the score in Logic Pro + a mid-file version just for the hell of it; you can play the mid file in VLC or most players, or pull it into garage band or similar. But it gives an interesting insight into how you use 3 channels and fill it with notes. I mean, I’m a SID novice, and this was my first SID tune, so I’m not SID expert; but it’s interesting nonetheless.”
This is my SoundCloud account which is massively out of date, but which I’m planning to populate with everything I’ve been up to over the past 10 years +
And here is a link to a Land rover advert that I did the music for:
Finally in July 2023, Richard decided to try and put his music through an oscilloscope type filter, which has been popular of late on YouTube. So here it is!
This is why we love what we do at Games That Weren’t. The preservation efforts of a last remaining copy of someone’s work has allowed them to revisit and scratch an itch. We hope there will be many more instances like this.
Now for a start, we’re not 100% certain if this was intended for release on the actual Hi-tec label, as you will find out below.
Wonderball has been floating around for a while and is a simple platform game with a ball that bounces around platforms. Coder Stefan Toftevall started the game when he was just 16yrs old and finished the development. After being part of several groups, Stefan got in touch with a guy called ‘Per’ who was apparently a person who had some contacts with a game company who could help Stefan get his game released.
Sadly Stefan heard no more from Per, and many years later the game was found on the web with copyright listed to 1992 High-tech Software. Stefan therefore believes tha the game was given to Hi-tec software to try and release it behind Stefan’s back.
It seems that Per failed in the attempt though if this was the case, as David Palmer was not aware of the game and Hi-tec went under anyway in 1992.
Overall Stefan never got paid for any of his work, but it seems luckily no-one made any money out of his work either. What exists on the web is believed to be everything of the game, and complete. No more of it exists.
Stefan has kindly given his Creator Speaks story, so take a read and then download this cute little game…
Case closed…
Wildfire is an ace horizontally scrolling shoot-em-up in the Armalyte mould.
Unfortunatly, once the game was programmed, it was sent to a games publishing company in Germany which was also part of a Cracking crew. Therefore it was cracked and pirated so heavily that no software publisher would touch it after that.
Rumour had it that the original programmer, unable to sell the game, put it into the public domain. We’re not sure whether or not this is true, but if anyone has any further information, let us know. But its likely that the game merely exists because of its pirated release.
According to Remi Ebus, this game was developed before Alter Developments came about, and it was completly finished. This version seems as if it is not completed, but then maybe it is?
Hopefully Niels will confirm his game as complete or incomplete in the near future. However, Secret Man has provided GTW with what is thought to be the final version of the game, although it has the sub label of "The return" to suggest it was a sequel. More details needed, but we believe this might be the final version of the game and we have included it in the download. The music and practically everything else matches the preview.
But it is a sad way for all this hard work to go to waste and not recoup any money for the developers. More soon we hope.
A chapter almost closed on this game…
For this game, we go back to when the C64 was dying out, or at least Commodore Format was, and there was a little spurt of new games coming from various sources.
One such game was ‘Wilberforce’, which looked like some kind of Cauldron clone, however, featuring an apprentice and not a witch.
The game was reviewed in Commodore Format issue 46, scoring 55%, but although the game was advertised for sale, it seemed to have never got released anywhere. Not even Gamebase had the game listed in their records.
Well, we found that the game did indeed have a very limited release to just a handful of people. Sadly because of the low grade, the game’s sales were appalling.
Nabil Gonem, the game’s creator, tells GTW that it was pitched to several companies, but they turned it down as the C64 games market died out. So he decided to go it alone and sell it by mail order.
What is quite impressive is that Nabil was a one man show and did all his own music, SFX, graphics and code. There was no-one to help him. He enjoyed doing the game, and all in all it was a bit of fun to him.
What seemed to be a lost game was eventually found when contributor Michael Culshaw found the game in his attic, and ported the game to PC. He has kindly passed this onto GTW, and we can now proudly present this long lost title. Although it had a very limited release, it sits here because of its commercial pitching.
It is not a fantastic game, but it is playable and a nice title. I’m glad its been found, as it would have been a shame to have been lost. The zip is two disk sides, and there is also a text file containing the manual which came with the game.
Nabil is now a web developer, and has not followed up a career in games creation. You can hear from Nabil about the game in Creator Speaks.
Enjoy this nice little game like it should have been back in 1994. A case finally closed and another game saved…
Had it found its way onto the 8-bit market, Whirligig would have been that rare thing for the time, a game planned to be released on all the major gaming markets, the 8-bit, 16-bit and the PC (However, although it was released on the ST and the Amiga, the 8-bit versions (And also PC version according to Richard Hewison) never saw the light of day.
The game itself is a 3D space exploration game, although in reality it seems like only a few of the sprites, including the player, were drawn in 3D and the game itself plays pretty much in 2D. In fact it plays like a souped-up version of the classic ‘Asteroids’ and as such seems like it could be easily ported to an 8-bit system.
A review of the game in Computer and Video Games Magazine from August 1988 states that the 8-bit versions were to follow in the autumn along with the PC version, ‘no earlier than October’. The PC version made it, so why didn’t the 8-bit versions?
Well, Mike Singleton confirms that when Microprose took over Firebird, they decided to drop the C64 versions due to concerns with framerates and also that the markets were dying and did not want to waste too much time on the platforms. Otherwise the games would have in fact been completed and released.
We know from an interview Chris Pink did with the Amstrad CPC Games resource website (http://tacgr.emuunlim.com) that not only did he create the graphics for the PC version of Whirligig but that he also programmed the 8-bit versions.
Indeed Chris confirmed to us he was involved, and confirms that a C64 conversion did indeed exist. The C64 version was not done by Chris though, but by Mike Lyons – with most of the maths done by Chris.
The game had a working level system which showed the map (where you could pick a gate to go through to test). The Spectrum and Amstrad versions were fully playable, but also scrapped. The C64 version isn’t available from Chris, but he does have the PC, Amstrad and Spectrum code still… maybe someday people will get to see it.
Mike Lyons got in touch with GTW in December 2022 and explained there was very limited graphics for the game, most of the sheet sprites were computer generated and the ship from a mesh. The rest of the graphics used complex maths to draw. It took about a minute of processing time on the ST 16-bit version, and with that in mind it was probably beyond acceptable for the 8-bits.
Mike had actually taken over the project from Kevin Mulholland, and it was worked on after finishing a UK and US version of War in Middle Earth.
Chances of finding anything are slim, though Mike does have some disks still and is in the process of going through them. An early concept or remains of the code could some day be dug out to show how it was looking.
A wonderful game on the Spectrum 128k, and the silent sequel to The Great Escape (As the game was originally billed as a sequel and called Tibet). This was set in the same mould as TGE, and followed on from its success.
After the success of the Spectrum game, talks were made about creating ports to all other machines, including the Commodore 64.
The main problem was that the Spectrum game was fitted into 128k of memory, and the C64 had the job of squeezing it into 64k. Not totally impossible, but a hard task, and something that could not be made into Multiload.
Stuart Fotheringham does not recall the C64 version, but worked on the Spectrum version. He states about the problems of trying to convert this game had it had happened. GTW is told that Ocean recieved the finished game and design from Denton Designs, and Ocean would have contracted other developers to do other versions.
It seemed therefore that it was likely that there was a C64 version in consideration, or even production. Unfortunately we can now confirm that although considered, the game was never started.
John Heap in a recent article with Retro Gamer magazine on Where Time Stood Still on the Spectrum, mentioned to Stuart Hunt that the problem was that the game was 128k for a start, but additionally they had seen the C64 port of Great Escape and felt that was incredibly slow. With both those factors, it was decided that no C64 conversion was to be started and that it would remain exclusive to the ZX Spectrum.
It seems that Gari Biasillo was also close to have been involved in a C64 conversion, as a recent interview with C64.com revealled:
"I joined Ocean as a musician but asked if I could write a game first to help improve my programming skills. This was the first real game I wrote which was a port from the Spectrum version by Dynamic Software (Basket Master)
I had no code to go from so I had to just play the game and come up with my own interpretation. I was actually first asked to port a game by Denton Designs and was sent to their offices in Liverpool to take a look and talk to the guys there. The game was Where Time Stood Still, an isometric game, which would have been too complex for a green programmer like myself to undertake, which I told the boss, Gary Bracey."
The game was later to be released on the Amstrad and ST, but only the ST version made it. But with the C64 version, it is another case we can close the door on.
Case sadly closed :(
Released on the Amiga back in 1989, Wayne Gretzky Hockey was a great little game of hockey. In an 1989 issue of games magazine "Games Player’s" and in its Amiga review, it mentioned that a C64/128 version was being planned for release that year. It is hard to imagine EA doing a game so late into the 80’s when you consider they practically left the C64 market early on to go onto the 16-bits.
However, we can confirm that a conversion was started…
Michael Hart was given a dream job at the age of 14 as a beta tester at Bethesda Softworks before they hit the big time. At one point during his career in around 1990, Michael joked about doing a C64 port of the original Wayne Gretzky Hockey game, seeing as the NES version was being done and released. Chris Weaver had heard the idea and told Michael to go ahead and do it if he wanted. Michael was loaned the NES source code as reference and Michael set to work on the game in his own time. It took some weeks to knock out a prototype due to school work and other things, but he got smooth scrolling just right with tons of players moving around the screen. The guys at Bethesda saw it and loved it and tried to encourage Michael to finish it off. But unfortunately just before he left the office that day, Chris Weaver decided to abandon the project due to the dying C64 market. That was the death of the game.
Michael did keep a disk with the work on, but sadly tragedy struck in years that followed and a leaky pipe destroyed all of his C64 disks and whatever might have remained of the game. There is a really really really slim hope that it ever survived in any other shape or form as a result.
It seems that the conversion was a test to see Michael’s programming abilities, with Chris knowing from the start that they probably couldn’t release it as it was too late into the C64’s life for them.
A huge shame overall, but we will keep this one open in the hope that it may turn up some day… you never know… For now, read Michael’s full story in Creator Speaks, and we’ll get on with the search…
Do you know more about this conversion?…
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