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.

Latest News and Posts

Games That Weren’t featured in 2025 Zzap!64 annual!

Posted: by Frank Gasking

The 2025 Zzap!64 annual has arrived and looks great! The biggest surprise was the six page Games That Weren’t tribute feature by Ian Osborne, who had created the article that inspired it all. Talking about how some of the titles in his article were expanded upon.

I kept over the years misspelling Ian’s surname, and seems there were more I’d missed from old write ups on the site. Now fixed, and my apologies once more Ian. I can assure there are no more misspellings and I’ve double checked. Thank you so much for the lovely words!

Order your copy at https://fusionretrobooks.com/collections/2025annuals/products/zzap-64-annual-2025

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Posted in: GTW64 news, News | Leave a comment

GTW Highlight No.20: Crytek’s Engalus PC demo located and examined

Posted: by Frank Gasking

GTW Highlight No.20: In October, we located the long lost PC technical demo of Engalus. An early game from Crytek that was cancelled. We did a series of hi-res videos and showcased parts never seen before until now:

https://gamesthatwerent.com/2024/10/engalus/

That concludes our 20 reflective posts at Games That Weren’t. Tomorrow, we will begin the first of our final updates to sign off 2024, starting with a lost prototype PC game.

To look back at all our reflective posts over the past few weeks, please visit: https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/tag/xmas2024/

Posted in: News, PC | Tagged: | Leave a comment

GTW Highlight No.17: Recovery of Monster Muncher (VIC-20)

Posted: by Frank Gasking

GTW Highlight No.17: In September, we recovered and saved Matthew Smith’s long lost Commodore VIC-20 game Monster Muncher (missing 41 years). It was miraculously spotted in the Retro Computer Museum and was quite a recovery:

https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2024/09/monster-muncher/

A fixed version was then later done by Andy Hewitt, making the game fully playable as intended: https://hewco.itch.io/monster-muncher

Posted in: Commodore VIC-20, News | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Atari Addict released, including GTW feature!

Posted: by Frank Gasking

Atari Addict landed this weekend, and David Crookes has done an amazing job putting this #Atari special together with many different features across many platforms. We also had the honor of writing the unreleased games segment too!

To order, visit: https://pixel.addict.media/shop/atari-addict-magazine

Posted in: Atari, Atari 2600 / Atari VCS, Atari 400/800/XL, Atari 7800, Atari Falcon, Atari Jaguar, Atari Jaguar CD, Atari Lynx, Atari ST, News | Leave a comment