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.

Latest News and Posts

Multi-pack

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

A quick one for you, this time from a catalogue which advertised a Multipack of games which included:

  • Nine Men Morris
  • Cymon
  • Gammon 64

There is a Nine Mens Morris game in Gamebase, but this has now been confirmed to be a different version.

Thanks to Paul Jones (see comments), a copy has been located and he has very kindly preserved the game and provided a copy of the TAP image. Please see downloads!

Paul thankfully spotted the tape in a bundle and got it for a good price – he was very quick to preserve and try and make available – so thank you Paul!

They are indeed different programs to what is already out there by the looks of it and we now know that this was indeed sold – just in very limited numbers!

Case closed!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Master Tetris

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

A very buggy Tetris clone, called ‘Master Tetris’, with corrupted graphics, but still somehow playable.

It’s hard to critise a game as playable as Tetris, and this certainly is playable, but the downfall is the graphics and lack of any imagination.

The bugs are down to the early version, so it’s likely the bug was fixed in a later version of somekind.

The game seems to be fully playable, and I can’t see how much more work would have been needed to complete this game. It may have even been completed.

Luckily, the game came with some credits, so its possible that we could find out what actually happened to the game.

No Gameboy Tetris, but still a playable tetris clone…

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Mr Fixit

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

This was to be the original NightShift game, as it started out.. with a victorian toy-making machine.

Lucasfilm later stepped in and had all the toys changed and the game changed to what was eventually released as “Nightshift”.

It is quite possible that the game got very far before it had a change of graphics and a name change, but did anything exist of this, or has it been lost forever?

It would be really interesting to find something of the game, but we shouldn’t be too hopeful… it may have only been concept drawings and initial designs which were changed.

However, an interesting entry which we will try and find out more about regardless… For now, check out the cool “NightShift” game which did make it!

Check out the released game for now…

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Movie Monster, The

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

A quick entry for a slightly different looking Movie Monster game that was in various magazines at the time.

Happy Computer in particular were presented with a preview of “The Movie Monster” in the Spring of 1986 which had a blue Godzilla and further differences to the final version.

Early days for this one!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Motorcross Mania

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

An interesting new GTW entry this time from Silverbird, who advertised this game within inlays of other games and also on a magazine advert (where the screenshot comes from). It’s thanks to Richard Hewison from The Bird Sanctuary that this game has been brought to our attention.

The game looked as if it were a Motorbike-based cross between LED Storm, Action Fighter and Spy Hunter – though this was a guess from the single screenshot we had.

Thanks to Torsten, the game has been solved!… The game was sadly never to be as Silverbird went under just before the game could be released. Two years later, the game’s creator, Richard Lowenstein (Who created Twinky Goes Hiking for Firebird) sold the game to Magic Disk under a new name of Topcross.

So luckily you can enjoy the game and not worry about it being lost. One thing though is that the game mentions a loading picture which I expect would have been in the Silverbird version. Does anyone have the loading picture?… But also is there a version of this game with the "Motocross Mania" titles?

Well, Richard Lowenstein got in touch with us recently and helps close the case on the game…

"I was very surprised to see this screenshot, to say the least – since I am the author of the game and never ever knew about any intentions of the Silverbird label to release the game. Nice to learn this now, more than 20 years later!

Fact is: I offered the game to British Telecom under the name of Topcross and sent the a demo of the first level. Never heard from these guys again. A little later I approached some other publishers, namely CP Verlag and Micropartner, both in my homecountry of Germany.

CP Verlag published the game without ever telling me; just a couple of days after I had sold the game to Micropartner. Big mess, I can tell you. Anyway, in the end the game Topcross got published twice… Micropartner later used the game for their compilation Fantastic Four 2. So now you know the whole truth ;-)"

So there you have it!… No Silverbird version existed it seems and there is nothing really to find! Nothing with different titles either. So go download Topcross and enjoy!

Case closed!…

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Mothership 2

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

A GTW title that could be vapourware, but we can confirm there was planning to have a sequel to the fairly well recieved Mothership game that was originally released in 1983 by Softsync and then republished by Artic later. The game is a kind of Star Wars rip off, and isn’t too bad for its age.

Your 64 back in June 1984 put up a quick compo, and part of this was to design a level for the new Mothership 2 game which was to be produced. This was pretty much it, and news of the sequel was never heard any more of. Your 64 turned into Your Commodore, and that was it.

We don’t know much more, but we assume it was the same developers as with the first game. We need confirmation of this. Hopefully some ex-Artic guys will be able to help us shed some light, at the moment this sequel is lost in the depths of time.

Do you know any more?…

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Mortal Kombat 2

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

Possibly a bit of a shock for you now, as we take a look at a GTW entry for Mortal Kombat 2! Out of nowhere, an unofficial conversion of the sequel appeared, and a bloody good looking conversion too when you think of the tragedy of what was Street Fighter 2 on the C64.

Mortal Kombat 2’s C64 conversion was started by Hungarian crew Hermit Software back in 1998, and instead of just trying to do some wired ports of the digitized characters, the game features some properly pixeled graphics which work very well within the graphical limitations of the C64 – though of course with hi-res FLI and interlacing you would probably get as good as Mega Drive ;-)

Unfortunately, the game never got to a fully playable stage, but there is this demo which shows one of the characters moving around on a test level. Additionally there are many parts including the introduction sequence, title screens, character selection screens (functional) which all look very impressive indeed!

The project has been confirmed to have been scrapped and will never get completed it seems. We don’t believe that the game got any further than this, but it would be lovely if there was something more playable out there yet to be shown.

We are guessing that this conversion was done for pure fun, and it looks as if a lot of heart has been put into the conversion… as much as the Pinball Dreams conversion that was also abandoned. Well worth checking out to see a glimpse of how something like Mortal Kombat could be feasible on our humble breadbin.

Start of what could have been a mind blowing conversion, sadly never completed…

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Moreta – Dragonlady Of Pern

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

Moreta – Dragon Lady of Pern was to be the sequel to Dragonriders of Pern which was a popular title from the early days of Epyx Software in the Impossible Mission era.

The proposed sequel came from the popularity of the first game, but was sadly dropped for reasons currently unknown.

The only details currently known are from the programmer John W.S Marvin who spoke to an Epyx shrine page (http://home.arcor.de/cybergoth/gamesc/dragonridersofpern.html) and said…

“I was maybe 1/3 of the way through it. There were two aspects to it: thread fighting on dragon back, and plague containment.”

Really we will need to find the author to find out more about the loss of this game, and if anything has survived since. As it is from the very early days of the C64, this could be a very hard title to try and find anything of. Still, there is a story yet to tell for this one, so hopefully we’ll be back to this one soon.

In August 2024, archivist Scott Stilphen flagged up that he had once interviewed John, who had this to say about why the game was never finished:

“I was working on Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern, based on the Anne McCaffrey book, when the board of directors laid off half the company, including me.”

It isn’t clear at this stage if anything still exists of the development, but we certainly hope so.

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Moppel

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Another very early preview, Moppel is a simplistic side scroller
where you control some guy that I think is in a wheelchair and scrolls across a city landscape.

It’s quite simple, and apart from the scrolling and some little animations, it doesn’t do a great deal at the moment. It’s a bit buggy, and sadly you won’t get much enjoyment if you are expecting something to play.

We are guessing that there could be more to this game out there somewhere, but without any credit details, we have a bit of work to do. We know that the game was being developed in Germany, so maybe a German viewer will recognise this game?

Check it out for interest reasons, but there is a lot more to find out on this game, and hopefully more to hold out for…

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Moonraker

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

Thanks to Boerge Noest for highlighting this rather obscure game which was mentioned and discussed in Norweigen magazine Mikrodata back in 1984.

Apart from a discussion with the developers (In Norweigen at present, but here we go: Page 1, Page 2) and a screenshot of the game, nothing else has been seen. We hope to maybe get a translation at somepoint.

Did this ever get released at all?… Or did it just disappear?

It seems the developers didn’t do anything else, so did they decide to leave development?

We got in tough with both Gert and Torfinn back in 2012, and they confirmed that the game was completed and existed – but they never got round to getting it released. They had even recently resurrected the game for its 25th anniverary.

After some chasing over the years, Torfinn recovered the game in CCS64 emulation format and has allowed us to add it to the website. So after over 30 years of first seeing the screenshot – Boerge and many others can now enjoy the game!

It’s a simple shooter like you would expect from 1984, but it is great to finally see it in the flesh, and is worth a try!

Enjoy and case closed!

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