Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
Welcome to Games That Weren't!
We are an 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.
The game looks very much like The Scrolls of Abadon, which was released on the C64 by Americana. This suggests that Frank Cohen was the developer. Thanks to Paul Morrison, we learn that it was also advertised as being released for the C64 by Americana software as well in Zzap issue 10 (see scans).
Both Americana and Electric Dreams have the same address, suggesting that they hastily renamed the label to Americana – perhaps because the Electric Dreams label had already been taken by Activision?
Art Huff confirmed he had no involvement in the game. Early days, but at least we can play something of the game on the Atari for now. Surely the C64 edition must have been started, and even finished? So why not released?
Ron Rosen got in touch in December 2022, and we checked if he knew anything about the game. Firstly he confirmed that it wasn’t his, so it seems likely that Frank did the C64 version too.
Another exciting title from the authors of Armalyte, Cyberdyne Systems.
This time we were to be treated with a sooped up version of Sinistar from the arcades, with an awesome looking starfield effect and some superb graphics by Rob Levy. All the code was being done by John Kemp while Deadlock was being worked on.
This was not a title with any particular publisher in mind, but was a small project which was being worked on while other games like Armalyte and Deadlock were mainstream. In the end as projects died and other projects were assigned, Scimitar was long forgotten and shelved.
In recent times, Dan Phillips was digging out remains from his old disks and has kindly provided most for GTW. Scimitar originally proved slightly harder to find, with Dan not being able to provide any kind of Binary. However, John Kemp has all of his disks for his C128. In this batch was believed to be remains of Scimitar.
In December 2010, Robin Levy posted down some disks from himself and John, and one was labelled with Scimitar. And sure enough there was an executable showing a tech demo with the main ship and an impressive starfield!
It is VERY early though we must add, and apart from moving around the starfield (which is excellent) and controlling the cool main ship, there isn’t much to do. Also the background is dark grey for some reason rather than black.
We are not sure if this is as far as the game ever progressed, there could well be a more advanced version out there – but we need John/Robin to confirm.
But after the initial mentions of the game in the Cyberdyne article back in 1990 time, the game has been found in what may well be its final state!… Well worth checking out!
Enjoy, and we hope to learn more about this Cyberdyne game soon!…
Sounds like a fight that has broken out in a Chemistry lab, but the game doesn’t quite resemble that in this sideways shoot-em-up.
Quite a fair bit has been done for this game, all but the actual game itself. We’ve got a nice title picture, title screens and bits and pieces, but the game itself is at a early stage.
One thing that is almost put down, is actually doing the game’s picture and everything else first before the actual game, as the game never gets completed and the work never goes in as much as it should.
Science Fighter seems to be a case of this problem. The game’s engine is coming together, building a nice little sideways SEU, but not a lot is going on and the graphics are quite simple.
It’s got the potential of a nice sideway SEU however, and it would be interesting to know of a later version, possibly with attackwaves or other levels.
It seems a shame that the presentation may have gone to waste.
SAW Wars was a tongue in cheek game written by Ben Hayes before his days at Enigma Variations.
Ben described things in an interview as follows:
"Sort of a right to left shoot-em-down thing. There was a point to the game, in that you had to get through the various attack waves in order to drop a bomb on the offices of Stock Aitken and Waterman (this was 1989 remember … Rick Astley, Jason Donovan etc).
The sprites were all robbed, the other graphics were crap, the music was robbed and there were only about 6 attack patters. Thrilling stuff…. and it took about 20 minutes of tedium to reach the end. You could freeze it with an AR and alter the wave number with the screen editor, so at least you could see the end part easily!"
Ben later added when contacted in 2011:
"S.A.W. Wars was really nothing more than a load of nicked sprites, a character starfield and some ludicrous premise about blowing up "The Hit Factory" in a sideways shooter style. No terrain, no intelligent characters, no SFX… Nothing remotely worth mentioning, frankly. I think it was just me trying to work out how collision detection worked. People on Compunet would put up with anything back then, ‘cos there was nothing good around anyway."
An interesting sounding hacked game which unfortunately may never be found. You see, Ben lost all his disks in a flood many years back and this meant the likes of all his Kick Off 2 work was never to be found. The only chance of ever finding this one is if Ben had passed a copy to someone else. Is this a game you can recall?…. is it hidden in your disk collection?
Could be a very quick and simple open and shut case for this one!
A rather interesting entry from the Dutch USA Team back in 1987 – Saviour is a 8-way directional scrolling shoot-em-up which looks a heck of a lot like Parallax in early stages.
What is particularly interesting is that it is linked to Ocean Software within the ingame scroller. Was this game really being touted to Ocean Software back in the day?… We could probably see why it was rejected if it was, being overly similiar to Parallax.
But what if this was being put up as a sequel to Parallax? .. then we may have a different story. Really its down to us to try and get hold of Oscar and find out some more about this and get confirmation about the Ocean link… it could well be a hoax :) One last thing is that the demo has no music, but there is a credit to MC… and if you check out his entry in HVSC, he has a Parallax tune cover. Nah… can’t be can it?… :)
Still, a very nice game in its early stages … we’d love to learn if any more was ever created.
Well, the creator briefly got in touch with us to confirm that this was pretty much all that existed of the game, and it never materialised as a final game unfortunately.
We’ve tried to send some follow-up questions, but at present its gone a bit quiet. We hope to find out more soon and close the case on this one!
Save Those Janitors was an action video game where you had to rescue 9 stranded janitors aboard an orbiting nuclear reactor before food runs out. It was advertised in a 1992 issue of RUN magazine from the US. The game was sold on disk, but sadly it didn’t sell too well for the author:
“I sold 3 copies to mail in orders. So, it failed as far as selling it. I think I only have one or two copies left (in basement- in cases) so I hope they are readable.”
The developer seemed to really push that he had worked hard on the game and it featured some good scrolling techniques, but Charles gives reasons why he thinks it maybe failed:
“One thing, the game was written to be too hard really, so it was panned by a reviewer (I can’t recall who) and I really should have included user testing and response to their feedback. So it deserved to fail.
But someone who really wants to invest the effort could promote through levels but I know I could have done better in retrospect.”
A bit harsh maybe on himself, and it seems a huge shame that this one has not yet been preserved. However, Charles found someone who preserved the title and has allowed it to be released to the world.
Check out the download link above! … The game has been fully salvaged, and now you can check out the game for yourself. It is a little rock hard to play, so Charles mentions that you can hold down CTRL and S to put on a cheat mode. CTRL and D turns it off again.
Also included in the download is a fixed/cracked version by Armageddon (Work by Ian Coog, supply from Moloch) which features a number of fixes, including a PAL fix.
It is a pretty neat game, just one that if it was a little easier may have been better recieved. There is a possibility from the sources that the game could be tweaked. The main thing is that it is now saved for posterity, so go check it out!
Case closed, as its confirmed not a GTW, but watch this space for a download.
A previously unknown title which was dug up thanks to Simon Birrell. His old friend, Patricia Mitchell was programming C64 game called “Save the Hippy” .
The aim of this game was to collect dope from the garden of the hippy. It was mostly a resource management based game where the hippy would grow his own food (including mysteriously leafy plans!) and had to sow and tend to them – harvesting before they died or were nabbed by rabbits.
The main character was made up of two sprites joined up – and the background was flat, with a slight perspective attempt to look like a garden/field.
Patricia never got to finish the game or as a result release it. Patricia later moved to marketing and management and gave up programming altogether. Her first and only game was never to be!
Richard Hewison recently interviewed Patricia in an article for Retro Gamer magazine on Virgin Games, and the following was said:
“Patricia Mitchell joined Virgin Games from Thorn EMI and was originally meant to be one of the first female computer games programmers. She had learned assembler on the Atari 800 and began writing ‘Save the Hippie’ for the Commodore 64.
However, the game was abandoned when Virgin realised that the quality of titles they had released to date were no longer sufficient and they changed tactics and reduced the quantity and significantly upped the quality of their games. This meant that ‘Save the Hippie’ had to be sacrificed and was therefore abandoned. ”
Sadly when asked if the game had potentially survived – Patricia had confirmed that she had moved house a few years ago and had to put things into storage. A massive clear out would have very likely resulted in her one back up of the game to be lost forever.
This sadly will be a title that no-one will get to see unless something miraculous occurs. Case closed!
It’s 1996 and games on the C64 are slowly drying up completely, the enthusiasm of creating new C64 games for mail order sale was dying too.
Fanzines were the only real hope in the UK of any progress for the C64 scene, and one magazine called Commodore Scene tried desperately to take the C64 forward even further. Part of its quest was aided by Mike Berry, whom decided to create a one final hurrah on the C64 in the form of Savage Platforms, a free game for the readers of Commodore Scene.
From what started out as initially a clone of the classic “Frantic Freddie”, the game evolved and blossomed into the weird and wonderful creation, often advertised with the slogan “Miner Willy is a Sissy”.
Diaries were a regular feature on the game, with Mike giving his progress and even the odd screenshot. Readers were also asked to take part, creating various sprites and ideas to put into the game. The game become cult within the pages of Commodore Scene, and the enthusiasm towards it was fantastic. Mike was surrounded by support and encouragement for his new free title.
After many months, Mike eventually released a demo to the community, with the harsh warning to crackers not to touch his game. Sadly Mike was broken into, and had some of his disks stolen, which included most of Savage Platforms. Mike however strived to carry on and finish the game, but soon the diaries stopped and so did mention of the game.
When asked in recent times of “When will it be finished?”, Mike mentioned that someday it would be complete. But of course this was never to be. Now Mike has stopped all C64 activities, with his C64 in his attic, so development has ceased to be now. It is also very unlikely that we will ever see it completed.
For the Christmas 2006 update, Andrew Fisher dug out some of the work he contributed to the project, which include some R2D2 droids and other various bits. We have added this to the archive, including a version of the preview with different sprites.
All that currently remains is a 1 level preview, full of colour and animations, and contains the building blocks for a rather playable game. There is no sound as present, though Dave Green did compose all the music.
Mike has kindly agreed to dig out all remains of Savage Platforms, which could be anything from around 4 playable levels to up to almost 50. It depends how much was recovered from when he was broken into.
In December 2011, Mike managed to find David Green’s two tunes that he composed, including a Pulp Fiction cover. I’ve added the music demo to the main download, and Ian Coog/HVSC has kindly provided us with the SID file as a music download.
Additionally here is a disk inlay preserved from the Commodore Scene days and its preview release. And Mike Berry also recently dug out some artwork (Which may not have been seen before) regarding the game by Simon Reece.
In July 2022, Mike Berry then found the game’s unused loading screen that was produced by Simon Reece, as well as the hi-res charset for the main title screen logo. Both have been added to the gallery thanks to Mike.
A big thank you also to Allan Bairstow, who has very kindly spent a whole afternoon scanning all of the diary entries for us. These can be located as a download at the top of the page. Be warned the zip file is about 6mb in size. Please note that one or two pages are slightly corrupted, so I will be fixing these when I next get access to the magazines.
A promising and exciting title which the axe fell upon…
Before the hits of “Cybernoid”, “Stormlord”, “Smash TV”.. Nick Jones also took part in a C64 conversion of a Speccy title, “SAS Strike Force” for Mikrogen software (http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0004951) back in around 1987. The game was essentially a sideways scrolling run and shoot game, nothing too complex.
It was a relatively faithful conversion that Nick did, though Nick himself thought the game was really rubbish. Most likely down to a poor game being converted in the first place (Certainly the reviews aren’t too great for the Speccy version)
For currently unknown reasons, the game never made it out. 1987 was the last year of Mikrogen releases before Microvalue got hold of most of their old stock. Basically the company folded, and we believe this is what happened to the game (Which we also believe was completed).
All of Nick’s C64 bits are probably at his parents house back in the UK (Where as Nick now lives in the states). Maybe one day Nick may dig out some of his past work to share with the retro world, including this game. See what Nick has to say about the game in Creator Speaks.
It isn’t known who else was involved on the conversion, so it will be very hard trying to find anything of this title…
An interesting entry, this time a game which never saw the light of day which was being produced by FTL.
FTL was an arcade division of Gargoyle Games, and they got working on their first 3 titles: Shockway Rider, Lightforce and Samurai Dawn.
Now as you can guess, and because you’re reading this very page – Samurai Dawn never quite made it along with the first two. Shockway and Lightforce did on all platforms. But Samurai Dawn never surfaced even on the Spectrum (Following that link will show some advert scans, including some of the cover art)
There doesn’t seem to have been any mention specifically of a C64 version, but we can only assume that there was of somekind due to the C64 releases of their other two titles. But Luther Bhogal-Jones brought up an interesting point that after reading our entry on Thundercats V1, he always thought that the Gargoyle Games’ Thundercats was simply their unreleased FTL game Samurai Dawn, re-skinned for Elite.
What with the sword fighting nature of Thundercats, this could potentially be a good indication of what happened to the game. Elite may have paid Gargoyle to get them a Thundercats game very quickly, and they decided to just reskin the S.D game, thinking they could make a lot more money out of a licensed conversion. We’re not sure yet, but hope to find someone from Gargoyle to confirm. Otherwise we may be looking at a rather different game overall.
Well, we were close – but in 2015, we discovered that Samurai Dawn was likely not to have turned into Thundercats, but Gargoyle’s other game – Wolf, was in fact Thundercats originally. It is still possible that Samurai Dawn turned into Wolf, but it seems unlikely.
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