Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
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.
A sequel to a fairly popular tennis game on the C64 was due according to the Amiga review in one of the popular magazines of the time. The review stated that "A C64 version may follow in several month’s time"
Well, several months followed and sadly nothing ever surfaced. We guess that in those several months that Ubi-soft decided it was time to leave the C64 as the market was dying out and left the game just for Amiga/ST owners. A shame, as the Amiga/ST versions scored well into the 80’s, percent wise.
It asks the question whether anything was actually started on a C64 conversion or if it was just at a planning stage. We have sadly no leads at the moment for this particular game.
Another naff game i’m afraid.. a very simple BASIC looking game, where you have to protect a simple character block on the screen.
Terrible to look at and terrible to play… Either this is the actual game, or a very very early preview.
There is a credit, and GTW will attempt to find out what was going on with this game, and if it were going to be sold or not. It could be a result of a PD game, though confirmation is needed.
Project Stealth Fighter was one of Microprose’s excellent simulators, this one being based around the American Stealth Fighter and the C64 version was a good conversion.
A ZZAP feature on Microprose Software mentions various versions of their software including Pirates and Project Stealth Fighter. The article states that there was a version 8 making use of faster algorithms and improved gameplay.
Nothing else was heard of this new version. If we can find out who was programming the conversion, then we might be able to find out if there was anything playable written and if so, if anything still exists.
The source of this next entry is interesting as it was mentioned in "Illegal" pirate fanzine as something seen at PC 1988 show (or so it seems) by SSD of Cosmos.
At present we know very little about the game and there seems to be no information on the web about it.
This is one of the strangest games i’ve seen on a C64, mainly because of its originality of having a 2D sprite as the main character, and 3D vectors as the enemies.
Pro-Does features different vector shapes which have to be blasted away quickly, without touching you first, and all within a time limit.
It’s strange looking, and slightly impressive at first, but then the excitement quickly wears off and you are left with a simple shooter, with some flash bits of code to cover it up.
Gaz Spence recently in 2016 found that the game was an ending part to the demo Triiod 3, so it seems this was never intended to be a full game – but just part of the demo.
Will Wright, creator of Sim City and The Sims, started his career on the C64 with Raid on Bungeling Bay. (There is one theory that he got the idea for Sim City from creating the maps for RoBB.)
According to his mobygames summary, he worked on an unfinished C64 game called Probots. The sad thing is he no longer has any copies of the game, and would like to remake it…
Retro Gamer approached Will for an interview for an article Andrew Fisher is developing, but Will was too busy to answer the questions… which is a shame, because one of them was fishing for details on Probots…
Sadly as a result it could be hard to get much more background about this particular game, and finding it could be very tough. But what exactly happened to the game? Did it get mislaid, or lost in a fire or something?
We hope to find out in the near future, but for now we’ll have to use our imaginations to wonder what this could have been…
A strategy/action game originally for the Amiga which was also being worked on for the C64.
It has been told that the game was supposed to be programmed for the danish company "Interactivition", rumour is that they acted very unprofessional (not responding to phonecalls and such) and eventually the game’s programmer quit. The Amiga version never got completed (the programmer was "Kenneth Bernholm").
The preview features some early graphics and no sound.
This is all of Private Property, an exclusive GTW addition which allows you to prepare for battle and place weapons onto a map. Don’t start the game, otherwise it will crash.
Confirmed – finally! …. but Domark were indeed working on a C64 conversion of Prince of Persia. Who confirmed it?… Chris West. Who is now hoping to recover a copy to show to the world and said the following on Lemon 64:
“This looks fantastic, better than the version we did at Domark way back when. I had a version of this on my disks somewhere. I did just buy a 1541 to USB gadget so maybe it will show up if the disks are still readable and even the very nearly finished C64 version of Typhoon Thompson as well. Well done with a fab looking C64 game. ”
Chris by chance had seen the announcement of the C64 version release by MrSid and then stated how it was far far better than the version they were doing.
Domark’s version was to be made to run on a stock C64, but we believe that it was a target for the C64 GS.
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
When speaking again with Chris in 2023, he suggested that actually the game had only got to a stage with his brother Tony doing some graphics. It suggests that if there was any code, there may not have been much at all.
It is true that Prince Of Persia was to have an official conversion onto the C64 by none other than E&E, the creators of Lemmings on the C64.
Although quite late into the C64’s life, Prince Of Persia was to be developed for Domark, but sadly it was all too late and the C64 was dying fast.
According to Remi Ebus, the head of E&E, only possibly the main character sprites were ever done. Nothing more than that ever really happened before the title was scrapped.
If the Sprites were to be found, then that would certainly be something, and Remi has not ruled out the possibility of anything turning up of the game. So we may see a glimpse of what could of been sometime in the future we hope.
Just how well this conversion would have fared is but a mere guess. With a solid conversion of Lemmings, it seemed that E&E could do anything, so we may have missed another stunning conversion sadly.
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
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