Very quick entry, but mentioned in a 1997 edition of Commodore Scene was a new Poker game being worked on by Ewen Gillies.
At present there is a Solitare game in GB64, but not a Poker game.
Does this one still exist?
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
Pluff
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!
Plotting
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.
Player Manager
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.
Platform Mania
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…
Planets Of Death
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.
Plan 9 Outer Space
An interesting entry which ties in quite nicely with Attack of the Killer Tomatoes by the same company. Plan 9 from Outer Space was to be based on one of those old really cheesy sci-fi movies which came out in the beginning (With hub caps on strings used for UFO’s etc), and along with Attack of the Mutant Tomatoes, this was to be a bit of fun making against the old franchises.
The Tomato game was never released unfortunately along with this game too.
Now this was briefly mentioned as a possible release after “Attack of the Mutant Tomatoes” and “Attack of the Mushroom People”, which were to be the first two in the series. This I guess would have followed the series as another game had the first two been successful and were released.
Of course, with neither of the two main titles getting released, it is very unlikely anything was ever started… it’s most likely to have been an idea that floated around, though it was planned and hence gets an entry for archival purposes.
Thanks to contributor Fever in the comments, it has been highlighted that Plan 9 Outer Space was by director Ed Wood (who Tim Burton had made a biopic of back in the 1990s starring Johnny Depp). The game eventually got a completely separate licensed release by Gremlin Graphics for the Amiga, ST and PC in 1992.
No doubt this game was very different, but of course still based on the same source material! We hope to find out more soon about this particular version though in time.
Pizza Time
Pizza Time was to be a Intellivision game conversion to the C64 by the Mattel Electronics France offices. It was scheduled, but apparently never worked on, though it was given an id of #7858 on diskette.
The game was a sequel to BurgerTime and was at first jokingly called French Fries until a Pizza Theme was set up for the game and hence it was renamed. Sadly before the game could be finished, Mattel Electronics closed down.
As a result the Intellivision version never surfaced, and the C64 version was rumoured never to have been ever started. So its unlikely that we will find a full game, but we could find something of it at the very least!
More soon on this one!…
Pize
A very early preview of a sideways shoot-em-up, with no enemies or anything much to look at, apart from some backgrounds which scroll past.
The backgrounds are corrupted, with the wrong colours set up, so not really convincing many that this is the next Armalyte.
Given credit that the programmer has mentioned that this is an early preview, it can be noted that the preview isn’t too bad for a start. The main critism would be the size of the game area, with half the screen taken up by the logo and scores.
It’s not known how much more the programmer did to this game, before it was eventually left to sit on the scrap heap. Hopefully Overhead can be found, and more questions can be asked about this little preview.
Early stages this one so far… any more of it?…
Pirates V2
Pirates was an excellent game written by the brilliant Sid Meier, who with ‘Major’ Bill Stead founded Microprose. This was a popular hit on all machines and has recently resurfaced as a major new PC game, again written by Sid Meier.
A ZZAP feature on Microprose Software mentions various versions of their software including Pirates and Project Stealth Fighter.
The new version of Pirates was to have animated pictures, the pictures in the original game being mostly static. An improved version of Pirates was released on the Kixx XL label for the Amiga and the PC and recieved excellent reviews.
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.
Is this vapourware?…
