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.

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Populous

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

Populous was a groundbreaking game from the mind of Peter Molyneux, which was still around the time that the C64 was going strong still.  Of course, it posed the question of whether a C64 conversion would be on the cards.  A Master System conversion happened though, which frustrated us – but we moved on without nothing penned in.

In the UK at least, news of a conversion was non-existant, but 64’er in Germany had surprised its readers by printing screenshots of what looked like a working demo.  They had stated that the magazine received a demo-disk which included a demo of a c64-version of the god-sim Populous by Peter Molyneux.

The demo-disk included the first graphics and routines for this game, indicating that the scan shots were in fact real and interactive.  The last thing the magazine stated is that they will try to contact the programming team and give them some-sort of legal protection (“Schutzenhilfe”), and follow the development of the game.

It wasn’t known how things went with the game, and if 64’er got hold of the game. It looks unlikely due to nothing being released (and the coder later all but confirmed that no-one got in touch with them), but all we had for a while were screenshots from the magazine.

Zeldin informed GTW that the guys who made the early screens, did the game “Boom”. After the unsuccessful launch of “Boom”, they sent Zeldin and his crew all their started projects and said: “Finish it if you want!”. On those disks were the “Populous” graphics, and also the source codes.

Coder, Frank Hugenroth, got in touch with GTW64 in 2015 and confirmed that it was created more as a technical demo for the C64 and was contributed initially as a contribution to an animation/GFX competition to 64’er.

Frank mentioned that they pitched the potential conversion to EA Germany, but they sadly declined it (feeling that the market had moved on from the C64).   In the end, the demo initially created was done just for fun, but has a working grid of 64×64 and can be scrolled.  It’s suggested that after EA’s rejection, they did think about using the technique with another game – but it was never to be.

Well, one of the AWT members in 2015 – LightSide came to the rescue of GTW64 and has supplied us with the disk which Frank and Andre originally had sent over.  Which includes the source code.  This includes an interactive title page and a map which can be moved around rather impressively.  There is also a tune separately which was not integrated, and is pretty impressive.

Frank has given full permission also for the source code to be released.  The source code is credited to both Frank and Andre.  It is released under the Creative Commons license Attribution as detailed by Frank:

“This material is licensed under the Creative Commons license Attribution – Noncommercial – Share Alike 4.0 International. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.”

Separate from this version of Populous, we can confirm also that an official C64 version was in the pipeline!… Paul Hughes had the following to say…

“Its only a tidbit – I’m not sure how far that version of Populous actually went, but when I was in first talks with Pete and Les at Bullfrog about Flood 2 – they asked me (circa 1991) if I’d be interested in doing a 64 conversion of Pete’s Populous (having just left Ocean and having a raft of 64 routines still fresh in my mind).

As I got more and more “into” flood 2 and pushing the Atari ST, the thoughts of doing more 64 work where the furthest from my mind. I don’t think they ever got much further, and just afterwards they did a massive selling Megadrive port of Populous and it all fizzled away.”

So did they get someone else to do the port?… Is this the port?…. More info needed, but a very interesting snippet of information there…

But for now, check out what could have been the real deal had EA Germany signed it up!  A massive shame it never got further, but so glad it has been fully saved!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 9 Comments

Prince Of Persia

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

Around the same time that MOOD made a big impression with C64 sceners in 1996/97, Attila Pohorai (Coding and level graphics) and Viktor Varga (Intro code and graphics) put together a preview which would get many fanatical game’s players excited, including the C64 crowd.

Even though the classic Prince Of Persia was converted to almost every format in existence, the C64 version for some unknown reason was missed out. Sad, because every version that came out was a huge hit. It’s unknown actually if the C64 did have an official version in the planning stages, though the non existence of a C64 conversion was about to be rectified.

A series of stills were released as a slideshow preview, showing various screens of the game on the C64. It was just impressive to see the game making some kind of form on our beloved breadbin, but behind the hype it seems that Prince Of Persia looked a little off colour and plain with its shades of cyan and blue.

And even though a lot of screens were in the preview, there was no main character to look at, or any action whatsoever… just some stills and a good conversion of the game’s Arabian tune. Once the excitement died down, so did any sign of more news of the game. The guy behind the graphics contacted GTW and mentioned that the game hadn’t been scrapped, but no more has since been heard and it seems as P.O.P had finally been stopped.

It is not known how far the game ever reached, and even if the main character was present and running around, just like the original game. Hopefully contact with Viktor will help us find out some more, and even see some glimpses of what had been done.

In total there have been 3 attempts on converting Prince of Persia – one unofficial and two official. Including this entry, you can read about all 3 within GTW64. However, in late 2011 – Mr Sid completed an impressive unofficial conversion of the game in Easy Flash format which you can checkout here: http://www.rgcd.co.uk/2011/10/prince-of-persia-c64.html

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 1 Comment

Pool Game

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

This isn’t actually the title of the game…. but the title at the time wasn’t decided when Beyond Belief were given an introduction to the pages of Commodore Force.

They had promise of many titles (Many with titles which sounded very familiar!), but unfortunatly Beyond Belief did not make a big enough impact on the market to stay as an established games company on the c64.

The game looked kinda good… though by the looks of things, it had an element of stripping, but the female stripper looked laughable and could hardly provide much thrill to sado’s who like the likes of Lara Croft being naked in Tomb Raider! :)

The game was based on Pocket Gal, but minus the digitised nude females :)

This may have been finished, or at least close to being finished. Jimmy did release Shellshock to Commodore Format, but the others remain uncovered. The game did look kinda good though.

Can anyone help with this one?…

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 1 Comment

Police Quest

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Police Quest was the first of a trilogy written by former officer Jim Walls. It centered on you controlling Officer Sonny Bonds who had to solve various murders and drug cases. This was a favourite on the Amiga and it was a surprise to hear of a C64 version. German magazine ASM reviewed the C64 version of Police Quest. Thanks to Amy, a partical translation has been recieved – they didn’t like the graphics and it seemed they didn’t like it at all and gave it a -1.

Timo Weirich supplies the scan:

And recently gave us the full translation:

"The life of a cop in the land of opportunity is pretty hard, at least in the case when one plays POLICE QUEST by SIERRA on the C-64. That might not least be due to the rather bad graphics and (the fact) that one can hardly recognize a policeman. The sprite of our hero is so poorly designed that one must doubt of the graphic artist’s skills. Fortunately, the game still plays excellent, so that I also want to recommend this game warmly to the 64ers. It gets a deduction of points nevertheless, sorry SIERRA."

However, nothing has been seen of this game in the UK so did ASM review an incomplete game? Personally, I heard nothing of a C64 version until seeing this article. None of their other popular graphic adventure franchises Kings Quest and Space Quest made it to the machine.

Thanks to Aristides Castiglioni, both Al Lowe and Jim Walls (The creators of the game) were quizzed about the existance of a C64 conversion, and it was news to them. It seems that Sierra only planned for a C64 conversion, so maybe the ASM reviewed version was an unofficial conversion?

We hope to find out more from ASM to what code they reviewed and seeing what might still exist. This could well be vapourware i’m afraid…

Do you know anymore about this game?…

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 1 Comment

Pluff

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

A colourful single screen platform adventure game comes in the form of a oddly named game ‘Pluff’… Named after the blobby main character who has to go around various rooms collecting various objects, in classic JSW style action. The game feels like a mixture of Bod Squad and Demon Blues, what with its decoration and look and feel.

Pluff comes as a nicely animated blob with a hi-res overlay, though oddly has a yellow outline, which doesn’t look quite right – but seems to be intentional. Other sprites are also of the same nature of detail and merge nicely into the game.

Graphics are very colourful, and detail is reasonable throughout the game’s quite large map (Considering its a preview), although its very block based in design. It’s still functional enough! Playability wise, it seems to lack the substance of other games of its kind and a little simplistic, but a fun game none the less!

It has been believed for years that the game was never actually completed, but recently in 2014 – contributor Asphodel spotted the game on Retrocollector.org, and it seems the game was released in very limited numbers in Poland by LK Avalon back in 1996. We haven’t ever seen any reviews of it though or adverts for the game.

Thanks to the very kind loan from Havar B. Hojem, GTW64 has been able to fully preserve the title and present the full version which many will never have seen. The game was a complete pain to preserve. Luckily the tape had 3 copies recorded on one side, and after about 8 attempts – we got one of those copies to work! Just! The tape seems to use some kind of fast load, and the game is very quick indeed to load.

The full version differs slightly from the preview it seems, but the main thing you get is a nice intro picture, which is similar to Creatures… and a nice little animated intro sequence before the game kicks in. The title now has a quick random sound that plays, some minor differences from the preview too. We haven’t yet played all the way through – but many of the screens look the same as the preview. No doubt there is a lot more tucked away!

You can also check out the inlays and tape scans in the gallery. Many thanks to Havar for his kind loan, which now means that this surprise finding can be laid to rest! Maybe soon we will hear from the coder and find out more about the game that went on sale.

Case closed!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 5 Comments

Plotting

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

A tragic tale for this title, where Plotting was in fact fully completed and even reviewed by the top C64 magazines at the time.

The game was planned for Cartridge release, to allow for instantaneous action and plenty of graphical backdrops and busy title screens. The game was developed for Ocean by Twilight Software, with music by Sonic Graffiti. However, it was never to be and the game would never appear on shelves.

Plotting was leaked onto the cracking scene, where it is rumoured that the game was stolen from Ocean by someone at the company. A conflicting report suggests that the game was already scrapped and had accidently leaked out via other means. I can’t quite see why Ocean would decide not to release what was a pretty solid game. We hope that Stuart Cook will be able to shed some light in the future on what happened.

The download shows a lot of loading, which indicates that the game was certainly built for cartridge. Some people on the C64 scene have confirmed this with the memory layouts matching Ocean cartridges. The loading occurs between title screen and demo. The game however was cracked from disk and not cartridge. It is not known if a cartridge was actually produced or not, Paul Hughes apparently left Ocean before the game could have been built.

Graphically the game looks good, and plays very well.. sadly the 2 player mode is missing from the original. Additionally the game seems to just loop with no ending, so we’re not 100% sure if this is a final version of the game, or if there is potentially more to find.

For now though, check out the game for yourself and see what you think.

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Player Manager

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

This game was released on the Amiga in 1990 and was reviewed in Zzap May 1990. The game was essentially a managerial version of Kick Off, with the Kick Off engine used for the arcade game. At the end of the review, a C64 update mentioned that the C64 version was to debut in July – but it never did.

We pretty much know that Mark Greenshields was behind the managerial code, and Finlay Munroe’s code was to be used for the arcade part. Ben Hayes cartridge work we believe was to be a separate thing, but could well have integrated the managerial part from Mark at a later date.

What is interesting is that Finlay coded Kick Off 2, and not the original Kick Off on the C64… so was Finlay reworking the old engine, or was the C64 version to integrate with Kick Off 2 instead?

Mark shed light that the work was almost complete, but Anco never paid Mark for his work – so he never passed it over.

There is a chance that something could be saved of the game, but it is unlikely. Watch this space as we try and see if Mark recovers anything of the game. Check out all the excellent scans, dug out by Martin / Stadium 64 for now.

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Platform Mania

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Manic Miner spawned many a clone back in its day, but eventually it began to dry up, until remakes on the PC began to have their day. Ste Pattullo however felt there was still room for another Manic Miner clone, and began work on the simply titled "Platform Mania".

The game was first heard about by those who paid particular attention to the text on Limbo 2, one of Ste’s previous games on the Commodore Disk User covermount. Platform Mania was to be coming soon, but was never heard of again.

For some time, GTW has been aware of the game and had attempted to contact Ste with no results sadly. However, Ste himself got in touch by pure chance after doing a search on the net, and prompty posted us a load of his work on a few old C64 disks. On there was the long lost Platform Mania and what remained of it.

Already we have described the game as a Manic Miner clone, and that it is, with multi-colour based graphics and interesting little sprites. You essentially control a pink blob that you must get to collect various little objects on a single screen, then proceed to the exit.

The game is in it’s fairly early stages, and is quite bugged at the moment. Platform jumping is not 100% accurate, and there seems to be a few features not working, such as an interesting 2 player mode, which is quite intriguing (We will ask Ste more about this feature soon to find out how this would have worked in the game). Also there seems to be some graphic corruption in places, but otherwise the game is playable and working. You can complete the various levels which are present (We believe there are around 10 in total). When you die, thats it… you will have to reset the game… Lives and restart points had not been coded into the game at this stage.

Separate from the game was the title screen, but unlinked. Thanks to Jazzcat, we also offer a single file fixed version which has the title screen. Press space to go into the game.

It is not quite known yet why the game was never finished or released. We are guessing that the joining with Digital Magic might have helped shelve this project, and by the time Ste came back, the C64 had died out. Confirmation on this soon.

Although you should not expect a full game which will keep you burning the midnight oil, it is great to see this lost work and preserve it for people to see. Check it out and take a look and wonder "What if", just like with many of the other titles we’ve covered so far…

Good early start of a Manic Miner clone… unfortunately never quite made it…

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Planets Of Death

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

A nice looking sideways shooter, in it’s early stages but showing some promise. A few attack waves, and a repetitive map is all that this preview really consists of, indicating what was going to be, and giving rise to some expectation that we could be seeing a nice little blaster.

Originally the game was leaked to the world in 1995 by Genesis Project, and in 2017 – a new tidied up version, with SFX demo was released. We have added this version here for you to check out. Sound was tidied up and stopped from running in the background (a carry over from the intro). The title tune for the game has also been added to the intro.

The exact plan for the game is unknown at present, and nothing was really mentioned about this game in any magazines. Hopefully the developers will get in touch some day and shed a bit more light about the game.

A lot more information needed on this game, and soon if anything is to be found out on it. This is probably as far as it ever got!

More soon hopefully from the developers.

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