Games That Weren't^®

Lemmings had just been finished, and then the average Amiga game popped up in the scene news about its conversion being worked on. It was basically lemmings which climbed EVERYWHERE. This was first mentioned in Commodore Force, towards the end of its shelf life.

To my surprise, the preview was easily obtainable from the internet, and it was found that the game was actually being worked on by one of the guy’s behind SCS-TRC.

It is a very impressive looking preview, consisting of a very faithful conversion of the original Amiga game, and some awesome graphics and music (By the guy who did the preview music to Lemmings).

The game got scrapped by Storm/Sales Curve as the C64’s life drew to a close, and so it never got completed. It was I guess pretty suicidal timing for a C64 commercial release. The game’s author recently mentioned that they actually had a contract from Sales Curve, but due to the dwindling market, they were only offered royalties. Due to the amount of work still to be completed, the decided to can it.

Anyway, this is all that is made of the game… there was nothing more, so i’ve been told.

However, although that was thought to be it … some 14 years later, the game was resurrected by the developer. Without the source code still, the game was reverse engineered and a new improved preview was released at X2012, featuring improved controls and a lot of bugs fixed.

It is now planned for the game to actually be completed properly – and Enno is asking for a graphics artist who wants to help finish the game. We could finally see Troddlers on the C64!

Exciting developments – check out the preview which we have added here!

A recently surfaced game thanks to Jazzcat, this time another space SEU which was in development roughly 15 years ago.

Taking the Delta style theme, Trigger Happy features some promising graphics and attack waves.. but really its too early to judge how well this game would have been had it been finished. It might have been asking too much for it to top Delta.

Early signs are promising, but sadly for reasons currently unknown… the game was never completed and thus never saw the light of day.

The game was originally passed onto a scener many years ago, and was requested not to be spread. After 15 years, it seems that it might not matter anymore.. so people can enjoy at least what was ever made.

Although not a great deal to look at, its a "What if" title, as with many others we currently have. A lot more reseach needed for this title… can anyone help us with this one?

Nice attackwaves and overall fairly promising…

When you thought you had seen a load of new Apex bits and pieces, something else turns up!

This is a very early preview of a Sidearms style game, which isn’t really playable apart from moving the main ship on the screen.

This features graphics which look very similiar to those of Retrograde and Cyberdyne Warrior, which suggests that this could have been scrapped in favour of those two games and had materials used from this preview. This was also the suggestion of Steve Rowlands when we asked him about this preview.

Sadly at present, the preview has a main sprite which is corrupted. We had hoped to have the corruption fixed in the near future, so we could actually see what the main sprite would have looked liked.

Otherwise there is some nice graphics and it looks like a typical Apex game. The font used may be familiar to Cyberdyne Warrior fans, and it seems this was later used in that particular game.

There is a weapons selection part at the bottom of the screen in the border, but this is unaccessible and the main ship currently cannot shoot. This whole demo is merely a test for a game concept that got scrapped.

Steve confirms that this would have been a Sidearms clone of sorts, but ideas ran dry at the time and it was cancelled. As stated earlier, remains were used in Retrograde and Cyberdyne Warrior.

Upon hacking into the code, it was found that there are a load of sprites which have been unused in this preview. We will try and extract these soon to show you on the shots page.

Nothing to search for or find, this will soon be a closed case.

Another interesting Apex development…

It’s hard to pick the best ever footy management sim on the C64… Many would pick those created by "The Cult", or die hard fans would say "Football Manager".

Secret Lab Productions had a crack at producing their own top quality football management sim called "Trainer".

Featuring some nice graphics and intelligent management controls, the game seemed quite promising.

But sadly, as many games in GTW have had same fate, the game was scrapped. All that is left is a half playable preview, which is fairly limited.

For what reason though, is unknown to GTW, though with credits present, it could only be a matter of time before we find out what actually happened. It feels like a Simulmundo game, so was this one of their scrapped games like "Italian Night 99" ?

Football isn’t coming home in this game’s case…