Games That Weren't^®

Nah, its nothing to do with Cheeze biscuits or Consevative Party conferences in Brighton, but is a rather early version of a Mayhem clone.

When I say "Clone", it seems to be just that, with most the graphics seem to be heavily copied from the classic platformer, just with a new main character.

The preview has got a lot of glitches and looks nowhere near as fluid as Mayhem does. Very early times for this game, which also has no sound.

It’s unknown how close this would have been to Mayhem in its gameplay, but it would be interesting to find out if TUC ever got to a more playable stage.

No credits are attatched to this mysterious game, which is a shame, as it makes things much harder to work with.

Mayhem would be pissed at this game…

A big finding for GTW, thanks to Zeldin/Cascade, who came across a bizarre set of files on a bunch of second hand disks. These were named Trojan Demo 1 + 2.

Upon further examination, it seems that the preview was of an early conversion of a Capcom arcade (http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=10202). A bit more digging and we found that Elite were in fact linked to the conversion for the ZX Spectrum here.

When we queried things with Steve Wilcox from Elite, he mentioned that they considered it but Capcom’s commercial terms were unrealistic and the game only “middling”. Funnily enough the Elite evidence is very strong, as there is a message from the programmer which says “I would have liked to have written Scooby Doo”.

The previews we have are of a working title screen and high-score, and of a scrolling part of level 1. None of it is playable, but the files are labelled 1 and 3, which means that a second file is actually missing and could well be out there somewhere. Just how the game got leaked anyway in this current form we don’t know, but we believe that it was on a BBS. Maybe someone has all the files, and maybe part 2 is actually a playable version? Do you know where it is?

We believe that the development was by Durell, and quite likely Ron Jeffs – who was their main C64 developer. This means that Rob Hubbard would have been doing the music (who had Trojan listed down in his invoice history). Clive Townsend confirmed he did the ZX version at Durell and recalls seeing the other versions in development too. The ZX version thankfully has been saved in its final state.

In 2012 we did have reason to believe that FTL (part of Gargoyle Games) was behind the conversion, though we need to track down Roy Carter and Greg Follis to confirm for sure, but then many moons ago we found some odd ninja sprites tucked away in the Hitpak version of 1942 (see gallery). Could these potentially have been intended for Trojan? If so, then it suggests that the developer could well have been Stephen Green who did 1942. But our money is still on Ron Jeffs.

Interestingly, in late 2024 – Michael Huth / C64preservation.de found an advert for the game in a US manual for Bionic Commando. It asks the question whether Capcom USA had another team doing a conversion or if they were planning to utilize a UK development.

If you know anything more or can help us find the missing second file – then please do get in touch.

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…