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.

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Twilight Zone

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Twilight Zone was to be a graphic adventure based on the popular TV series of the 80’s. The game was being produced and eventually got a release on the Amiga and on PC.

The C64 version was coming (and listed in catalogs), but eventually it never quite surfaced and was soon forgotten about. The game didn’t get a bad reception, so just why the game never surfaced is beyond us at the moment. A news item mentioned the game in issue 14 of The Games Machine.

The game should have been simple to produce, so maybe First Row Software decided to abandon the C64 early on? The C64 did die out earlier in the US games wise compared to the UK.

A lot more research required for this one, but maybe you know something?

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Twice Shy

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Ram Jam Corporation, famous for their adventure games and Dandy, teamed up with Mosaic to create their next game Twice Shy, an adventure game based on the Dick Francis novel about a computer program which predicts race results.

The Commodore version was announced in CVG January 1987, but it never surfaced anywhere – although the Spectrum version did… http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0007142.

Unfortunately, according to Richard Hewison who spoke with the developers, the C64 version didn’t happen. It came at a time of relative turmoil for the developer, and so the C64 version was never started and RamJam ceased trading as a company about 6 months after the Spectrum version was published.

However, contributor Sean O’Neill has found that the C64 version was fully reviewed in Commodore User magazine in December 1986! Did they infact review the Spectrum version, or was there actually a complete conversion made?

More information needed, but it seems that there could well be a full game out there to find after all!

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TV Sports Basketball

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Yet another TV sports game was planned by the excellent Cinemaware, and late into the C64’s life. Sadly this was never to be it seems.

Cinemaware’s website describes the game as follows:

“Lace up you hightops and get psyched for a fast breaking, in-your-face, full court, 5-on-5 pro basketball simulation that looks exactly like a network broadcast. TV Sports: Basketball gives you total control over an entire squad, including player substitutions and strategic double teaming. Your skills as player and coach will receive their ultimate test as sudden shifts in momentum and fatigue take their toll.

Go head-to-head against another human or face an awesome computer opponent. You’ll marvel at the Cinemaware quality animation and graphics; real arcade action on offensive and defensive; individual and team statistics; even the post season playoffs! TV Sports: Basketball is truly Phi Slamma Jamma of basketball simulations!”

In typical Cinemaware style, this was an excellently presented game on Amiga and PC, and no doubt a C64 conversion would have been very close (If judging by the past efforts of the previous TV Sports Football conversion).

So what happened?… We are not really sure. We’re guessing that TV Sports Football was to be their swansong on the C64 platform, and probably the game didn’t get great sales as they expected. That was a sign to move away from the machine, and hence any work which may have been started would have been scrapped.

Richard Hewison who worked at Mirrorsoft doesn’t recall a C64 version or seeing one at all. Cinemaware did ST versions at Mirrorsoft’s request for Europe, and the Football conversion for the C64 was also requested. It is unknown if the Basketball title was in the C64 request list from Mirrorsoft. It could well be down to finding the developers of the Football game to find out if th

We have added credits from TV Sports Football with question marks over them – as it could well have been the same developers involved. We’ll need confirmation of it. It is very likely that Jim Simmons would have done the music, as he did this for most of Cinemaware’s games on the C64.

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Tusari 2

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

The original Tusari was a flick-screen platform game that appeared on ZZAP! Megatape 35, given away with issue 89. However, Martin Piper has revealed that the sequel was going to be different.

“It was a much updated version of the original Tusari that is a scroller rather than a flip screen based game.”

Very exciting stuff – the original game was very well received by everyone including Frank and Andrew at the time who bought the magazine in the good old days. Martin these days is very accustomed to the odd Berzerk arcade conversion, and has been knocking a fair bit of code out recently.

So is there any chance of finding what’s left?… “I’m trying to find sources to resurrect a couple of old projects I was working on many years ago. But my work disks from back then are sadly not well documented.”, says Martin.

From the sounds of things, the sequel got to a fairly advanced stage – so who knows what might turn up. We are very hopeful that Martin can find something very significant on his disks, but then he may decide to finish it (Which would be awesome!)

However, Martin has decided to try and resurrect the project for now by using a combination of his old Tusari code and new code. You can now download a preview that Martin has released. He is also generously keeping all of his new code public in GitHub, which you can check out at https://github.com/martinpiper/C64Public/tree/master/Tusari2

It seems that the sequel could be on its way at long last!

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Turner Software Games

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Turner Software was the label by Commodore Cracker’s editor Brian Turner. This was his own label where he attempted to inject some new C64 games into the market to save the machine from dying.

Unfortunately the games were just to be SEUCK efforts – but Brian was trying his best by making use of his design/graphical skills. Brian was pretty good with his artwork and layouts, so potentially his SEUCK efforts could have been quite good.

The titles planned for release were:

Danger Dive, Crimefigther and Bunderang.

Here is the article from Commodore Cracker with more details about the games. Did Brian maybe send you a copy of his game?

At present we are not in touch with Brian, but hope to be soon to find out if he still has his games. It would be great to hear from him, so if you’re reading Brian – please get in touch!

Recently we did manage to recover some of Brian’s Danger Dive game, but sadly the background graphics are corrupted. It is a preview showing at least some of the sprites from the game. We hope to find more soon!

More soon on these titles we hope.

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Turn Change

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Yet another puzzler in production for the C64, and unfortunatly very similar to many other puzzlers which have been on the C64 already.

Nice colourful graphics, but that is about it. Nothing much else new to offer in the way of gameplay.

Interestingly in 2010 I had an email from David Vigh who corrected our credits and passed us on some other versions of Turn Change. Very oddly in the preview, the credits are not correct.

Unfortunately, although we have a intro picture and a working title screen – the actual game itself is not fully working. There should be a slightly different version of the puzzle game with a different background image to check out at least. Hopefully in the future we may be able to get these fixed up.

The game was posted to Gremlin Graphics by Zoran Zambo in the early 90’s, but must have been rejected. After this we are not sure what happened – there seems to have been some kind of attempt to revive the game in the mid-90’s, but things died out again.

How far did the game get before it was cancelled is the big question? Hopefully David will be able to shed some light soon…

Another puzzling puzzle for GTW to solve…

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Turbo Tiger Software Titles

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

A large entry which i’ve decided to do for an entire software house’s set of games. You see, not all of Turbo Tiger Software’s games were unreleased but it strangely seems that none exist in any digital form on the web at present even though there was a lot of advertising, so we want to flag everything ever mentioned and tied in with TTS and see if we can help recover most (if not all) of their planned releases.

Melvin P Andrews was the man behind the label and worked from his home at Hull. The last we heard is that TTS moved to Porter Street in Hull, and then they went very quiet. What happened?

Below is a summary of some of the key games with details taken from various fanzines. Followed by other titles which have had a brief mention of some sort.

SEU puzzler (Released with Commodore Cracker)

“An exclusive game again made for us by TTS! It’s a SEUCK game, but as well as a shootin’ section, it’s also a quiz (yes, a quiz with SEUCK!) and a maze game. Answer 15 questions in the quiz level, get ’em right, you score 10 pts get one wrong and you start again. In the shoot-em-up bit, just blast everything you see and in the maze, find the route that gets you the most points. This whole game, as well as being highly original, has strong “Alice in Wonderland” overtones!! CONTROLS: Joystick any port”

Haunted Mansion (1995 – reviewed in Commodore Action)

Magazine Editor (1995 – reviewed in Commodore Action)

Spacelord (SEUCK) (1995 – reviewed in Commodore Action)

FILE T1 (SCAN in Scans folder) (1995 – reviewed in Commodore Action)

TOP DETECTIVE (See gallery for review)

Other titles mention included:

Quiz Master, Magazine editor, Haunted Mansion, Top Detective, Spacelord, Quiz Master, Lub n Lob in space, Jolly Island, Cappin’ Cappy, Pub Buster, Maze Trooper, Blast ’em GP, UFO prisoner, Future CHess, Ball-fighter, GRQ II, Match predictor, GRQ III, AARHH! (Compilation), Kidz Stuff, Hangman Deluxe, UFO – Landed (Sequel to UFO prisoner), Spacelord 2

Melvin also released a compilation called SEUM (Shoot em up mayhem) which was released in 1996 and contained Lub N Lob in space, Spacelord special, UFO Prisoner and Spacelord.

Help us dig out these games. Even though some were apparently poor, it would be great to digitally preserve this work before its lost for good.

UPDATE: 9/1/13 – We have managed to recover pretty much everything of Space Lord from an issue of Commodore Cracker. It was a demo, but just with the rest of the levels not tied in. We have tied them in, and although it says demo – the game is pretty much complete. In addition to this – some of Magazine Editor Demo, but unfortunately it is heavily corrupted – we have offered a download of as much as we can salvage for now.

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Turbo Cup Challenge

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

A car racing game which was released on the Amiga, Amstrad and Spectrum. A C64 version was mentioned as coming soon in The Games Machine around 1989 time.

The Spectrum version seemed to have got a release only on budget and the original version by Loriciels is still at large… http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0005458

Loriciels went on to survive until around 1993, so its possible they deemed the C64 and Spectrum platforms to be weak in comparison to the Amstrad in the homeland of France. The Amstrad was the only major 8-bit machine to natively support the French SECAM TV standard – other systems needed specialised monitors to display in colour (hence it’s status as the biggest machine there) – thanks to Martin Smith for that contribution!

With a complete Spectrum release, Loriciels may have just sold it off cheap to a budget label to recoup some money. If this was the case, it is likely the C64 version didn’t get far as otherwise Players would have released on the C64 too. In one magazine, it was suggested in the Amiga review that the Spectrum version was due in January 1989 and the C64 version in February 1989 … suggesting it was behind.

However, Martin/Stadium has found that the C64 edition was listed in the loading instructions for the Spectrum/Amstrad edition. PDF is attached.

We know little more at the moment, so its early days. Do you know anything?

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 5 Comments

Tujad

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Tujad was a arcade maze based game which was released on the Spectrum and Amstrad (http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0005448). It got above average reviews, but overall wasn’t that bad a game.

An early advert for the game mentioned the C64 was having a conversion, but it seems they must have had problems converting and the game was cancelled as a result. Need confirmation on this, but it certainly seems the case. A news item also briefly mentioned the game in Commodore User magazine – see scans.

We got in touch with Geoff Phillips after noticing he did the C64 conversion of Mighty Bombjack – we found that he was involved with Orpheus, and suggested that Richard Wilkins may have had involvement on the C64 version. We’ll try and get hold of Richard to find out more and what happened to the game.

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments