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.
Sadly another game I can’t mention too much about due to a lack of instructions or information.
The game is another puzzler with a theme I don’t quite understand. There is a small left aligned grid with colourful blocks, but thats about it.
The game doesn’t seem to do anything much else, so its down to finding the people behind the game and finding out what was intended. Can you help with this one?
Erm….. nice colours…
The craze was almost too much when Tamagotchi cyber pets made their debut in the market during the late 1990s. The Japanese craze almost took over the world, or at least large numbers of UK children – who probably neglected their real pets to look after their virtual ones!
Although Bandai are listed, I can’t see them having anything to do with this likely unofficial conversion that was done back in 1998.
This is quite an accurate representation of the little handheld game, right down to the pixel based display. We believe that all the functions are there, though not all fully working. You can feed, play, kill and do other things to your “Pet”. Controls are handled via A, B and C on the keyboard to match the 3 buttons on the device.
Thanks to Gaz Spence, we have learnt that the preview was given away on 64’er magazine’s coverdisk back in 1998, but this is just the same Laxity crack which we have here and which has been in CSDB for years now.
We are unsure if the preview got any further than this or what the plans were exactly. Hopefully some day the developers will get in touch to reveal more about this development.
Talvisota is a Finnish War Strategy game which was released on the MSX back in 1987. It is about Finland’s war against Soviet Union in 1939-1940, Talvisota means Winter War.
Finnish magazine Trioposti first mentioned the game and details that Triosoft were considering doing a C64 conversion. Now Triosoft have done C64 work before, and a single game exists in Gamebase which they published, so it could well be that something was started.
We know little more apart from that it could be by the same MSX developers, so who are we looking for and what are we looking for exactly?… Could this game have been completed ?
We learn that Triosoft is still operating, but no longer publishing games. We hope therefore to learn more about this game!
We need lots of info on this one – so any Finnish viewers, please help!
A neat little Uridium style shooter, which was being worked on… but never quite finished…. though what you can see is the 99% complete version, but minus any sound or music.
This was a first ever coded game by Rasmus, and was sent to several games companies for release, like Codemasters etc, who turned the game down.
A big shame, as the game is graphically sound and quite playable. The title’s are slightly strange with an armoured knight, but otherwise a worthy game.
The game is now finally released exclusivly to this site in its full (Or 99% full version format). You can download and enjoy this cool little Uridium clone.
Case closed.. this is all that was ever done…
T-Wrecks was what eventually became The Muncher. Essentially a very large scrolling Rampage clone with a huge main dinosaur sprite with Godzilla references. It was a great little game and a lot of fun.
However, the game started out as T-Wrecks until a deal was made with a UK sweets company who produces Chewits.
T-Wrecks may have also been based on a Transformers character .. We are not completely sure just yet.
What happened to the original game though? And how different was it? Was it just a case of a different title or was there more?
More soon on this one we hope!
The Mystery of Arkham Manor was one of your more interactive text adventures, using a system commonly seen in the Lucasfilm games Maniac Mansion. Selecting text from some preset words to construct various commands and phrases.
The game got a mixed reception on the Spectrum and Amstrad platforms, but we never got to find out what was thought of the C64 conversion which never appeared.
Normally when a game appears on just the Spectrum and Amstrad, you assume that the C64 version hit problems in the conversion process. The game was no isometric Spectrum hit to convert, but a rather simple concept which had been done before in similiar games by Melbourne House such as Redhawk.
Alan Malik was the C64 developer for the game, but unfortunately Alan struggled with the C64 architecture after primarily working on the BBC micro platform (Writing the ‘Sleuth’ debugger). Mike Lewis (One of the game’s original developers on the Spectrum) worked with Alan for around 5 days to try and help finish things off, but unfortunately although the basic code was there, things were quite buggy and after discussion with Melbourne House, the game on the C64 was dropped. A huge shame that maybe Alan wasn’t given a bit more time to adapt to the platform, but we guess that the time slot for the game’s appearance had passed.
In early 2010, a breakthrough was made when Andrew Craigie came forward with his unreleased SID tune for the game (Which now you can download for the first time! – Thanks to Ian Coog for tidying up the SID file!). He then gave us the remaining credits.
As for the game itself, it seemed the best hope of finding something of the game would be by contacting Alan and seeing if by chance he kept any of his development disks. Unfortunately Alan confirmed that everything was given back to Melbourne House (Dev kits etc). Alan mentions that from memory there was a change in ownership / direction and it fell of the radar and that was that. Kit was returned and everyone called it a day.
So now it is down to the graphic artist having something, but it is very unlikely. This could well be lost forever, unless someone from Melbourne House comes forward.
Do you know anything more of this conversion?…
A surprising entry into the GTW archives.
This was never really announced on the C64, until Chris West revealed that he was producing the C64 conversion for Domark of the famous Amiga title by Dan Gorlin
In the game you had to control Typhoon Thompson on a Jet-Sled over sea based terrain, and you have to save a child from the Sea Sprites.
The game was almost completed, but for reasons currently unknown, the plug was pulled on the project. Chris was almost there with the game. Now looking at past work of Chris and Tony, this game would have very likely been a very slick conversion.
Chris has informed GTW that the game still exists on disk, but he is having trouble reading the disk. This could be a problem with his disk drive, or the disk itself. Either way, Chris is keen to convert the game and release it for fan’s of Gorlin’s work, which is great news.
Chris is currently in the process of buying a new C64 disk drive, and hopefully he’ll be able to read his disks. Otherwise it may require some serious salvaging to bring the game back to life.
In 2023, Chris spoke again about the development and that he was sent source code from Dan Gorlin that had already work started on converting to the Commodore 64. It had been in process of being finished off when it was cancelled. So its possible that with Chris’ version and Peter Ward’s version, there may have been three different developments under way in total, unless it was Peter Ward’s code that Chris had been sent?
Fingers crossed, but very exciting times for a game that was never even known to have existed until now!
We could be grabbing sea sprites very soon!…
Twister is probably one of the more historic GTW titles that we have come across, not for its gameplay, but for the troubles it caused around the time of its publicity…
Firstly the working title for the game was “Mother or Harlots”, which caused controversy, and was then changed to “Mother of Charlotte”. Eventually this was deemed to boring, and “Twister” was tagged on. Then, the game was advertised quite a lot with scantly clad females helping to promote the game’s story line. At a computer convention in the United Kingdom, System 3 were famously asked to remove the females from the hall.
The game itself was kind of similiar to Discs of Tron in terms of look and feel, and the rest of the Jazz was purely there to get sales I think. As for the game…
Moby Games tells the story of the game…
“The evil Twister has a plan to ruin humanity, and only you can stop her. This involves travelling through your inner thoughts to gather the required symbols.
The first level is platform-based and scrolls into the screen, with platforms arranged as with the grid in hopscotch, with one in the middle followed by one to either the left and right, then another in the middle. You must collect crystals, as well as packs of 8 shots (you start with 20), whilst shooting as many of Charlotte’s minions as you can.
On the second level you must collect ‘Ultimate Power’ by collecting each of those 13 levels, from a 3D room with full floor and ceiling interaction, by quickly swapping between the 2 surfaces, shooting and avoiding enemies in the process. Level four (of six) adds a rocket launcher, allowing you to move around the whole screen. Eventually you must face down and shoot the Twister in the throat to kill her. “
So the game never surfaced on the C64, but it did eventually surface on the Spectrum, created by Chris Yates and Jon Hare. Jon Hare also did the graphics on the C64 version, and mentioned that he doesn’t recall too much about it.
It still begs the question why the game never got released if other versions did make it. We know that something must have been in production, due to the mention of the C64 in almost everything Twister based. Was it a poor conversion?
Jon confirms to us that the game was commissioned by System 3 via LT Software (who seem to have had a poor run of getting any games completed). Jon and Chris designed and completed the Spectrum version, but the C64 duties were handed to someone else (who Jon cannot recall), and it seems it fell by the way side.
Mark Cale then added a little more:
“Twister was to have gone to C64 but again finding a good team to convert it was the problem. The original team that did the Spectrum version was John and Chris that went on to set up Sensible Software after they wrote Twister for us. They tried to do IK before leaving LT Software but for what ever reason they left LT Software. LT Software did the awful Spectrum and Amstrad versions. Archer stepped in and did IK for us and the rest is history.”
So it seems that LT Software were dropped, but possibly the game wasn’t shaping up well on the C64. It is hoped that something may be found, but its looking increasingly unlikely now!
I’m kind of surprised we didn’t have an entry for this game sooner in GTW64. This is another Paul Kubiszyn game which never saw the light of day and was being developed around the time Commodore Format were still going (just!)
Very strangely, this is very very similiar to Super Pac Twins which Paul was developing at the same time. That was a more simplistic game where you just ate dots in a maze like Pac Man, but Twin Balls expands on the idea by making it more of a Pengiun Towers clone with sliding tiles and other bits. It’s actually a far better game!
Well, basically Paul informs us that after CF put Super Pac Twins on the covermount without permission – he canned that game. The demo released was just for screenshot purposes, but CF may have been desperate for covermount content. Not to be put off, Twin Balls was a re-use of the concept that was canned, but with added elements to move it away from a standard Pac Man clone.
In total, two previews were released – and the game never got finished due to real life kicking in and other projects (See Creator Speaks). We assume that Paul just lost interest in the game before going onto doing the likes of ?Interlaced Pairs as his final swan song on the C64.
Nothing more was ever produced, so check out the creator speaks for input from Paul himself about the game…
Case closed!
Ask a C64 user what their top 10 games are, and you’ll often find Turrican or Turrican 2 high up there. Although Turrican 2 was Manfred Trenz’s last Turrican effort on the C64, this did not deter fans of the game to create their own sequel in years to come.
Games were slowly drying up towards the end of the 90’s, but one or two gems were promised… such as Turrican 3 from Protovision. Rumours of development were spread like wildfire on the C64 scene, but then suddenly a preview appeared unexpectidly, much to Protovision’s dismay…It seems that while the game was being demonstrated at a party, someone stole the disk and spread the game preview around.
It was this sad gesture from the C64 scene which prompted the game’s developers Stefan Gutsch and Chester Kollschen to cancel the game production. Ironically at the same time, Factor 5, who were developing Turrican on other systems threatened legal action against the game. So it was doomed anyway… but maybe in recent times it would have been finished off had they not lost heart in the game due to one person who stole the disk.The game itself is a very faithful update of Turrican, featuring flicker free sprites and even music as the game played!… something not thought possible even by Manfred Trenz.
A few levels were done before the game was cancelled, with one or two large monsters (which looked very impressive). Overall the production looked very promising.Around the same time, Smash Designs started producing their own version of Turrican 3, and in 2004 they finally finished it. Possibly some ideas from Protovision’s version were used as inspiration, but at least a Turrican 3 did make it in the end. Would two versions have been completed had Protovision not had their disk stolen, and didn’t have Factor 5 on their backs?
The preview has been floating around the net for some time, but recently Protovision have been spreading all the remains of Turrican 3 with their other sold products for people to see.
Jazzcat has kindly passed on these remains for GTW to preserve and show some of you for the first time too. Now you can see for yourself the potential of this conversion.
Also check out the words from Protovision, as mentioned on their website.
Case closed…
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