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.
Another GTW entry for Kele Line games, for more on their background check out the entry for Force of the Vulcan.
Pirates of the Ocean was one of four games slated for release by Kele Line in 1987, alongside Force of the Vulcan, that never made it to release. The only two games they released in 1987 were Tiger Mission and The Vikings, which were to be their last released before going bankrupt in the same year.
The only reference to Pirates of the Ocean we have comes in issue two of Computer Action and as such we have no screenshots, code or design notes to see what the game was intended to be. An obvious guess, given the title, would be that it was a sea-faring game, with lots of, erm, pirates…and oceans. Beyond that though, we are left guessing.
The Vikings is actually one of my favourite C64 games of all time, despite it getting mixed reviews in the press at the time. As such I’d like to see these Kele Line games found more than most, and did manage to get in touch with the writer of The Vikings, Søren Grønbech, about these unreleased games.
Sadly, although he said the names seemed familiar he had no memory of them, so for now Pirates of the Ocean remains lost at sea (ho ho).
In 2022, contributor Henrik Matzen kindly provided some scans – with one showing a news release listing of upcoming games – including Pirates of the Ocean.
Another early preview, with some nice graphics, but not enough to give an indication what this game plays like.
The actual preview consists of a start screen, which seems to be in a hanger, and 4 end of level bosses (Which are accessible from the start of the game). There are no actual levels to play through, with no enemies or anything.
The game seems to be a space SEU, but then it could be anything. What is strange, is the fact that the end of level baddies are present in this game, and nothing of the actual levels. Very bizzare indeed.
The end bosses are fairly good, and well.. thats about it. Nothing else is actually known about the game, apart from that it features some music by Chris Huelsbeck. (Ripped from somewhere I think)
Early days, but it seems that Empire Software were considering a sequel very early on to Pipe Mania, so much so that a design document was produced with all the details by The Assembly Line back in 1991. A massive thank you to Paul Cawley for recovering and scanning these details.
Although no C64 conversion is mentioned (only Atari ST, Amiga and PC), it is likely that Empire would have arranged for a conversion to have taken place. Assembly Line clearly state that they do not want to do the 8-bit versions at all.
Assembly Line produced a design document that you can find in the scans area below, and which depicts at least 50 levels in total, borrowing ideas from both Klax and Loopz to extend the basic theme of the game. The idea was that each level would have a set of tasks to complete, such as “Make four sections, each five pieces long”.
There was concern about borrowing ideas, but there is no intention to just rip both games off. Did Empire perhaps get cold feet because of this?
One innovative feature was to be various control options for the user to choose from and whichever they felt most comfortable with. They could even choose mouse as well. A two player mode was also to be included, as well as bonus levels to break up the tasks.
There seems to be no evidence that the design was taken forward or started at this stage, but we hope to find out more soon. It wasn’t until much later when Empire released a sequel, which doesn’t seem to follow this design document at all.
Many moons ago in the pages of Commodore Scene, their news pages stated about a game being created called Pimple Panic for the C64 by Megastyle. Nothing was ever heard of about the game again, until Ruben Spaans came forward with the following info and confirming the game:
“An action game where the player controls a hand navigating over a face where the purpose is to squeeze pimples. Some coding was done (not sure if it was playable, don’t remember), but I think all the graphics were done (done by Crockett/Space-Roy, I think).
I’ll see if I can find Pimple Panic. However, I’m afraid I have to search through my physical 5,25″ disks, as I haven’t found the game so far in my .d64 files. They are stored at my mother’s place, so I won’t be able to access these disks until Easter or maybe the summer.”
Well, in 2013 – Ruben managed to find the game. Although its unfinished, it’s playable. You can squeeze pimples (though you have to be precisely in the middle), and there is only one level which you cannot complete. Pimples just appear quicker and all over the place until the sprite multiplexer cannot handle it. It’s a good glimpse of what could have been. We are not sure just yet why the game was cancelled.
Additionally, the download we have here also includes the source code in turbo assembler, artwork for additional levels and more tunes.
It’s another title saved from obscurity – just a shame it never quite got completed! Enjoy!
Pimania was an adventure game released very early on back in 1982/83. If you managed to crack the game and interpret the clues correctly – you could work out the time, date and place where someone will be waiting to hand over the "Golden Sundial of Pi" – worth £6000 in gold, diamond, lapis lazuli and obsidian.
The game had mixed receptions – not sure who ever got the prize either :) …
The game only really got a release on the Spectrum, BBC and Dragon 32k… though the C64 was mentioned in one particular advert. However, in other adverts the C64 option to order was removed. So did the game get cancelled on the C64?
Automata never released any other games on the C64, so maybe they decided to stick to the other platforms?… Seems strange really. Hopefully we can find out some of the developers who did the game and find out exactly what happened.
For now, we need more info – do you know anything?…
Pieces 2 was a sequel to a late 90’s puzzler which can be found at Gamebase at http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=5688&d=18&h=0 . Apparently the original game was released too early and by someone else, but we need confirmation on this.
Pawel Bol was the author who mentioned on a forum post that the game was supposed to be released in 2003, but he lost interest in working on the game and it never made it. It was to be a simple puzzle game with beautiful graphics by Timo Buschmann. He went on to say not to expect it to be released in the near future, as there was so much more work to be done with it.
The game was never announced anywhere, and the forum post at Gamebase was the first time the game got mentioned.
So what now with the game (and with us at the end of 2007)? … We had hoped to get hold of Pawel and find out more, and see if this game will indeed be finished. It could well be ending up in GTW in some shape or form.
Well, Pawel spoke to Jazzcat who told us that the game has been frozen for some time and no preview was ever made. It is believed that one day the game will be finished, but we cannot tell when. Otherwise its a project that may get here some day, but it isn’t something we can really search for and find. It will get released when / if it gets finished, and its as simple as that.
At present it seems that the game could well be finished off for Protovision and may not become a GTW afterall!… We shall see!… More details thanks to Ramos can be found here:
Part of an educational series, Picture Parts is one of around 6 which is sadly missing and one which may have been released, but is very possible that it didn’t quite make it out.
We’re not 100% sure what happened to it, and what it was about, so we are lacking a lot so far for this entry. It was based for young children, and we assume was some kind of jigsaw game which aided learning.
Text adventure from Kayde who went into administration at the 26th August 1983. Did Spectrum releases, tried to do C64 and Vic 20 ones, which never seemed to surface.
The game in the advert (Two adverts were submitted by Peter Weighill) was described as follows:
“An Alice in Wonderland type adventure game for youngsters. You’ll meet magical characters like the rabbit and the mouse, travel along coloured roads, collect everyday objects that may have an unusual use. And you wake-up, you’ll find yourself back at the picnic”
We don’t know how far the game got exactly, but do you know any more?
An old case for GTW this time, with a game that seems to be a mixture of Ocean’s obscure "Tank" game and an old Codemasters game.
It’s not known if this game was being created for a specific company, or if it were to be created and then sent around various games companies. Its possible that this preview was sent around to companies to see if anyone liked it. Maybe no-one did?
The game isn’t actually that bad, it looks and feels like an old average budget game, though is slightly awkward to play and quite difficult.
Graphically the game is quite weak, and the backgrounds are quite plain. All possibly because the preview is at an early stage of the game’s life.
The game may have been completed further, but if the game didn’t get any offers, then they may have only completed up to this preview. Charles Haley recently passed on an extra preview which has a 3rd level and no password screen.
There are some credits, so hopefully we can chase up these names and find out more about this game.
Pharaoh’s Pyramid was a fairly popular game for the Atari in the early 80’s by Master Control Software, and was a rather enjoyable Q-Bert clone. In the advert, it was stated that a Commodore 64 conversion was coming soon … but what happened to it?
Well, the game never surfaced and is now at large. The publisher never seemed to release any other software on the Commodore 64, so maybe they abandoned the platform early on in favor of the Atari?
We don’t know how far it got, but we learn that the game was being converted by one of Randy Platt’s childhood friends at the time, but never quite made it.
It is believed that the conversion was never finished, and it seems unlikely that anything will be found of it – but who knows. Strange things can happen!
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