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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Top Wrestling

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

Top Wrestling was another fighter trying to follow in the footsteps of WWF from Ocean back in the early 90’s. This game was the Italian’s own effort, and one which was looking quite nice from Genias back in 1992.

The game was mentioned in Zzap Italia in issue 67, where developer Angelo Righi was interviewed about his projects after “Tilt”, a puzzler he had just created and had published by Genias.

Top Wrestling was to be a conversion from an Amiga game, and looks like it was shaping up well.

Angelo gave some details about the game in the interview, like that there would be 64x48px sprites, 1/50s global animated (1 frame), no scrolling (Like the Amiga version does) but a 16 colour bitmap background and 4 wrestlers from the original game (Angelo stressed that he wanted to add more).

We have grabbed the shots published in the interview, and the game was looking quite good!… We can only assume that the game was scrapped as the C64 started to die out and Genias lost their way. His later game, Smash was actually released in 1993 by Idea – but I guess they could not get the rights to release Top Wrestling.

The question is now, how far did the game get?… and does it still exist anywhere today?… Well, thanks to Roberto Nicoletti, Angelo was tracked down and had the following to say about the game:

“The game was in an early development stage at the time the pictures were published in Zzap!, a lot of things were still missing and I didn’t go any further than what was shown.

In a few months, the video games market collapsed in Italy. Italian Zzap! wasn’t any longer an autonomous magazine and was later published as supplement of TGM. The truth is that C64 market went before I had the time to complete the game.”

When asked if he still had anything of the game:

“I don’t think I still have the sources. Of course, I will send them to you if I ever find them.”

So although unfortunately the game never got much further than a slightly playable demo, there is a remote possibility that the game could be recovered by Angelo and GTW can resurrect it for the website. It’s unlikely, and could be that it is missing forever, but we hold out hope!

A great looking unfinished wrestling game, can it be saved?…

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Top Cat

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Now for yet another potentially uncovered title in the lost 20 something from Codemasters.

This time a title which seems to have been the result of when Codemasters attempted to buy some cartoon licences from Hi-Tec after they ceased trading back in 1992.

Ben Hayes was tasked with starting a development on a new Top Cat game for Codemasters as it seems things were in negotiation with Dave Palmer at the time. Unfortunately things fell through and the licences never got sold to Codemasters – only Turbo Tortoise made it across onto the Codemasters label.

Top Cat didn’t get very far anyway, and Ben tells GTW:

"It never got beyond a blob bouncing around on some dustbins, and then Codies decided to ditch the 8-bits before it got anywhere. The details are pretty sketchy. "

It is hoped that Ben may have a stray disk somewhere with remains of the preview on, but its unlikely. We’ll see what happens, but this could easily be an open and shut case.

Will Top Cat make a slight return someday?…

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Tonic Tile

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

A rather intriguing title from "The Edge" this time, and one which to be honest i’ve never really heard of before until now. The only mention seems to have been in Soft 1988, Issue 2, and no UK magazines at the time – which is odd because "The Edge" was a UK based company.

Soft mentioned that the game was to take up two whole disks and have 33 levels of breakout action. Also included in the game was to be a built-in construction kit for the first 16 levels. According to the magazine, the game should already have been released for Atari ST, Amiga and C64 platforms – but where is it?

The Amiga and ST versions got a limited release it seems, but the C64 version never saw the light of day.

So what happened?… why did the C64 version not surface?… Well, there had been Krakout, Traz and many others at the time on the C64… so maybe Edge decided that Tonic Tile would not sell very well because there was already a glut of these styled games?… We need to find out more. We know nothing about how far the game got, how good it was looking etc.

Do you know anything?

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Toddler Tutor

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Alex Ross-Shaw

Channel 8 Software, the company behind this GTW, Toddler Tutor, released a series of educational software in the 1980s, for the C64 and the CGL – Sord M5, which was a Japanese computer similar to the ZX Spectrum. They also released adventure games, distributing games written by Brian Howarth.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that the home computer market was only beginning in earnest at this point, several of the educational games seem to have gone unreleased, including Primary Maths, ‘Gotcha’ Maths, I, Spy for Children and the game discussed in this article, Toddler Tutor. It’s likely that sales simple weren’t strong enough to ensure the release of all the games designed. The games seem fairly simple, designed to help children learn basic arithmetic while having fun.

The game it seems was released in the US by Comm*Data, and can be found on Gamebase:

http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=18693&d=18&h=0

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Toccata

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

One of Carl Muller’s many unreleased C64 games before he did the likes of Speedball 2.

Toccata is a simple shoot-em-up, which consists of a ship which shoots at stars before they get too big. Kind of like Mega Apocalypse meets Stars and Rings.

The game features a weird raster background, and the sprites are simple hi-res (Though the stars well animate).

Everything about the game feels old, and its a little bit slow to play, but its worth a quick blast, and the action does speed up a little later in the game.

The game was supposidly fully completed, but never offered to anyone. The game doesn’t quite contain enough for a publisher to take interest, but maybe the game was intended as a preview to be finished off?

This is one that hopefully Carl can clear up in the future…

More information needed on this one…

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3

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

Back in Your Commodore magazine and in 1991, their news section stated that Mirrorsoft were producing new Turtles games – two to be precise.

Apparently TMNT 2 was to be more of the same, though actually it turned out to be the arcade game. But what is this of Turtles 3? Well, it is mentioned that Mirrorsoft wanted a 3rd game, but did they envisage it being on the C64 too?

It is plausible that if there really was a 3rd game planned, it could have been for a conversion of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in time (which was released in 1991).

Richard Hewison confirms that a third game was not in the pipeline, and they had barely finished the arcade conversion before the company was put into administration in late 1991.

It seems that the mention of the 3rd game could have been planned as part of the licence deal, but had not been started/planned at all. Either that or marketing were just spreading some hype to the magazines.

Either way, this particular GTW is indeed vaporware, and a GTW we can therefore close the case on.

Case closed…

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 4 Comments

Titus The Fox

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

A strange naming for a title, so close to the publishing name. However, Titus The Fox was an above average platform affair on the 16-bit home computers.

The 8-bit conversions were all planned also, and saw the release of the Amstrad version. Seeing as the Amstrad was quite big in France, and Titus was French, it was not hard to see why this version made it out.

But for Spectrum and C64 users, we were unfortunate not to see anything. After some conversions of Crazy Cars and Fire and Forget, Titus’ Fox character was not to make its appearance.

Just why this is, is unknown at the moment. It is likely that the C64 conversion was started due to Titus’ other C64 involvements, but how far did it get?

Some early pointers to chase would be to find out who developed Blues Brothers, Crazy Cars and Fire and Forget. It is possible that the same developers of one of these games may have been working on Titus The Fox on the C64.

Patrick Furlong also found an advert on a CPC forum which lists the C64 as one of the formats. So confirmation that the plans were there.

A fox who hasn’t quite got out of his hole yet…

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Titan Find

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Destiny Software was a short-lived publisher active in 1988. Their demise has already produced one GTW, The Bobby Yazz Show, but the game that was planned to be their first release is another.

Titan Find was described in issue 32 of Zzap! as "A tense, all-action arcade strategy adventure game, featuring fast action".

We have no screenshots or developer names, so very little to go on, but it’s worth chasing up to see who might’ve been behind the game, and confirm whether Destiny folding prevented its release, and how far it got.

Do you know any more about this one?

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Titan’s Mystery

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Titan’s Mystery was to be a new title from Italian label Genias for 1992.

The game was mentioned in “C+VG Annuario 1992”, an addon to “C+VG” issue 11, December 1991…
http://ready64.org/articoli /leggi/idart/30/-rivista -panorama-del-software-ludico -nazionale

Stefan Roda, software manager in Genias, taked about two WIP titles which included "Titan’s Mystery". The game was initially for the Italian market only, as Stefan said: “…we put on it a lot, considering we’re working around it since one year…”.

Not much more is known about the game apart from this, but we assume that Genias went under or left the C64 market and as a result this game never managed to see the light of day. Who were the programmers?, were they behind previous Genias titles?

Well, we got hold of Stefan Roda, who sadly confirmed that nothing of the game was started. He left Genias shortly after the interview and the company went under, and so did the game. It seems that this really was it… vapourware. But it was mentioned that a lot of work was started on the game, so is there anything like designs to find?

More soon on this one we hope…

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Time Scanner V1

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

Yes, Time Scanner was actually released on the C64, and many of you can claim to own it. But how many of you can claim to own the version that should have been? Or should we say “versions”?

In July 1988, UK magazine Commodore User presented in their preview pages a promising Time Scanner conversion for our C64’s which looked something like this colourful shot we have in our gallery.

With the version that was released, we ended up with essentially a ZX Spectrum conversion, which bombed with all its reviews. There was also another screenshot which looked different in The Games Machine magazine, with different panels – but this turns out to have been a screenshot of the ZX Spectrum version, and a version for that platform that was never to be.

So what was going on? What was this strange multi-colour version that had been previewed? Did Activision do the same as with R-Type and bring in new coders? Well, it seems that was the case. Barry Leitch’s music for the game in later years also snuck out thanks to HVSC, who had also been involved in the earlier R-Type build that was cancelled.

We learnt that it was Catalyst Coders again who were behind the title, this time with Paul Cole as the developer (Who later went on to convert Strider on the C64). Chris Edwards was also on graphics duty. Interestingly though – Bob Pape’s book on R-Type suggests that both Jim Smart and David Jolliff were the original programmers on an aborted conversion – but Jim confirms he had no involvement on Time Scanner.

Paul had the following to say about the conversion, including excitingly how complete it was…

“It was near completion, but there were problems between Activision and Catalyst, We had attended a meeting on the morning it was pulled with Activision and they told us that it was still going ahead, we drove from Southampton to Portsmouth, by the time we got there, Activision had phoned up cancelling it. At that point, I was refused access to the PC to get any code.

The project was then sent to another company who messed it all up, What annoyed me was about 4 months after that, I got a call from Activision directly asking if I still had the code as my unfinished version was better than what they had.”

So, sadly Paul no longer has anything of what sounds like a far better game, but Chris Edwards may have something yet. It’s early days, but we’ll have to try and see what happens. Otherwise it could be case closed for this game. Some extra info from Games Machine 10-88 reveals that Time Scanner had suffered as a result of all the conversions that Mediagenic/Activision were trying to cover all at once.

We had wondered if the other team who had been brought in was ‘Foursfield’, who were the team behind Incredible Shrinking Sphere. In the ACE review of the game, it is stated that Foursfield were given the role of converting Time Scanner. However, after a comment from Martin Webb (who had coded the C64 conversion of Outrun), it seems that Foursfield were in fact the developers of the eventual released version.

Martin was the developer of the second version that took over from Paul and Chris’ edition. They were given the job and started from scratch, and originally the development was given to one of their in-house developers called Simon. Unfortunately, Simon hit problems with coding in the bouncing ball and collision detection, so Martin came on board to help out. However, Martin decided to pull out of the industry and the game was left in limbo.

It seems it was at this point that Activision in desperation had gone back to Paul Cole to see if he still had his code. When Paul confirmed he didn’t, Foursfield were likely brought in at the death and asked to knock out a conversion in record time. This would explain why the conversion was so poor, especially when to compare to the quality of Foursfield’s other works.

So, we have not one, but two earlier developments of Time Scanner to try and find. For the first version, it all hangs on Chris Edwards still having anything from back then. The second version will depend on if Martin has kept hold of anything. We hope that there will be positive news in the future to preserve something and see a small glimpse of what could have been.

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