Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
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.
"My whole bodyached as I scrambled back into the chopper.. the subs were back! … The rockets were coming in over Krakatoa and the constant explosions had brought the volcano to life!… I could stay to defend the tanker or get the islanders off the volcano, it wasn’t going to be easy!… Arming the rockets I lifted off and headed for trouble…"
That is the intro as described in the game’s advert in Your Computer back in 1984, which was a game that had just been released on the ZX Spectrum, but the advert stated that a C64 version was coming soon.
Basically due to the release of the Spectrum game (http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0002763), we can give you a little description about the game, and essentially the story above gives it away by signifying that there are actually two tasks to the game, which is one to defend your tanker and two to save and rescue as many people as possible from a volcano which has come to life.
The game is a sideways scrolling game which scrolls in both directions and has a little radar panel and other details at the foot of the screen. The graphics throughout were very colourful and well praised for the time. The main critisism of the game came through reviews stating that there was a lot going on and maybe too much. There were a lot of controls, and these were not even listed in the inlay. Still the game got a good respectable 83% from Crash, and was well recieved generally.
So what happened to the promised C64 conversion?… Well unfortunately nothing ever surfaced, and Abbex continued to produce for a long while past 1984. There are no credits apart from a Spectrum credit to Paul Reynolds. Maybe he would know more?
A lot of research to be done with this one, do you know anything about it?
Yet another System 3 title takes to the GTW stage, this time with a rather obscure title which was briefly mentioned on a news clipping for System 3 in Zzap 64. As well as talking about Last Ninja and Bangkok Knights, another title was mentioned with the name of “Knuckles”.
The game was briefly described as a fist fighting game, and was mentioned in 1986. It was in the pipeline at the time, and the game was expected in early 1987.
Before anyone says anything, it is NOT Bangkok Knights which the title is referring to, as the game was already mentioned in the same cutting. So there were two beat-em-up’s in production.
In 2015, Mark Cale revealed that the game was to be a sequel to Bangkok Knights, which used large sprites and had open fighting. However, they could not get all the moves into the limited memory and scrapped the game as a result. Mark felt the game would not work if they tried to keep pushing it.
So there is something out there to find, but who did what? And can anything be recovered and shown for the first time?
Ah, the days when Ocean churned out many a movie/tv licence which was utter tripe eh?… Well, 1986 was a popular year mainly for some real stinkers such as Highlander, V and also Knight Rider. All of which were heavily delayed and when they eventually turned up, you’d wonder where all the time was spent – certainly not making a great game anyway!
In true tribute fashion to the “classic” game, Christian Widmann decided to enter a spoof sequel into the 2006 Crap Gaming Compo after much nagging by a fellow C64 scener on IRC. The game would have eventually gone onto a Cronosoft Cassette 50 compilation for charity, but unfortunatly some users took the competition too seriously and critisized things for being too leniant on rules. The runner of the competition had enough and sadly eventually closed the competition down.
Knight Rider 2 however got quite far and was coming on very well, probably a bit too well as it began to look like a fairly good little game in its own right with some good graphics and great music. However the game never quite made the planned deadline due a bug which took Christian ages to fix. After that, the developer got bored with the game and decided to do some more GBA based work instead.
Christian recalled…”Code, graphics and especially the “gameplay” is terrible, just as it was supposed to be. MTR’s redition of the original theme is way too good, I did the rest in a couple of nights while drinking cheap sangria and watching the original series on DVD, to get in the right Hoff mood. I’m quite proud of the sprites for the other cars, I did them in about 5 minutes (including saving them to disk!) and they look just perfect, like a 5-year-old would draw them. 8-) ”
In the end the game came with a great little introduction sequence, a loading screen in typical Ocean style and a semi playable game (Well, you can move your car and avoid other cars!). The game puts you in an Outrun style perspective, with a simple road effect … but the strange thing is that the game is actually more playable than Cisco Heat! :-)
It’s a shame it wasn’t fully completed, thanks to Christian you can now check out what might have been!….
Yet another game due out on the Commodore 64 but never arrived. Knight Force’s plot was to be as follows:
“The knight has to fight all the bad guys to get to Red Sabbath in a side scrolling action game.”
The game was released on the 16-bits, but wasn’t anything new and it had quite average reviews. Titus seemed to be reluctant to release C64 titles at a frequent pace, and many titles seem to have been lost at sea. Knight Force is one such title which has disappeared off the face of the earth. Was a C64 conversion started? If so, why was it cancelled?
Thanks to Marco Das, we got in touch with the 16-bit creator Alain Fernandes who said the following:
“Knight Force is never edited on Commodore 64, (90% certain). 1989/1990 is end of the Commodore 64 market.. and Titus , is never big sealer in Germany ( The bigest market with the US )… Titus make the major profit with the French market…
After 1995 , Titus change, and is start a new age, with international market, but is only on PC and “Console” market.”
However the Spectrum and CPC versions did get a release and depict a standard beat-em-up affair with pretty graphics and little or no playability. The game flopped it seems.
Oddly though – the Commodore 64 version is listed in the instructions (see downloads for the manual). Surely, something must have been started? This of course contradicts earlier reports from Alan – and perhaps there was something after all?
Kljuc (aka “The Key” in English) we believe is more of an educational program for children done by Suzy Soft. This game though is a rather simple Manic Miner style of game, with monocrome graphics – it’s got a nice feel about it though!
Although done for Suzy Soft (A ex-Yugoslavian, Croatia based software house), the game never apparently saw a release. It did however get released for the Spectrum. The C64 version was reportedly never to surface properly as Suzy Soft’s management was changing and they ditched the computer publishing department before the game could hit the shelves. The C64 version had some examples made, but that was sadly it.
The example version of the game did luckily make its way to Tomaz to transfer to TAP format and scan the inlays. Tomaz’s original excellent preservation work can be found at at his website. You can also click the download link here to checkout for yourself. The game is not in English, but thanks to CBA a translation has been made and can now be downloaded. Secret Man and Dr Schnuggels also did separate cracks. One of which has been included in the download. Many thanks to these guys for making a workable D64 and English copy of the game!
However, one of the authors, Aleksandar Ivanisevic, got in touch to say that the game was actually sold and that the developers were even paid for the work. He also noted that the copying equipment at Suzy could not handle the turbo tape speed, so it was published in the C64’s original slow tape loader.
So it seems therefore this was never a GTW as such, so very much a case closed!
Yet another SEUCK title which has come from the Zzap article which was ran back in 1992 time to search for good Megatape games.
James Sweeny’s Klaboom effort was seen as being too simplistic, and one which didn’t offer too much. One thing that was striking about the game was the fact that everything was black and white monochrome.
Eventually the game was sent to Binary Zone PD by James and featured on their coverdisk. You can download the game from The SEUCK Vault.
It is infact an early preview of Orcus, with hacked sprites from Mr Heli and other games.
It’s not known if this was actually going to be turned into a proper full game, or if it were intended just to get a few cheap points for a cracking crew.
More information is needed to confirm what was going on here, and what the plan was for this game.
Advertised in Home Computer Weekly, issue 85 – King Arthur’s Quest was an interesting looking 3D adventure game which was to be released on the likes of the Spectrum and also the Commodore 64. You would use the keys to turn around 360 degrees and move around a 10×10 grid layout.
The game overall was aimed to be a childrens adventure game, more than something for adults.
It is very likely the screenshot in the advert is from the Spectrum version. It seems that Hill MacGibbon didn’t get that much released onto the C64, so maybe they struggled with that platform overall getting suitable developers.
Welcome to what is the remains of Heartland V1, known as Kimera to those close to the project.
Kimera was infact the original given name to what eventually became Heartland, releaed by Odin Software back in 1986. Although we saw and enjoyed the original game without a thought in the world… it seems that the game was taking, or could have taken a rather different shape altogether.
Originally, the graphics were being designed by Stuart Fotheringham, and a set of backgrounds and objects were drawn up for the game. The scene was set and production was ready to be started, though for reasons currently unknonw, Stuart’s graphics were scrapped in favour of a new set of graphics, and a slightly different approach to the game.
It is possible that Stuart may have left Odin at that time, and this is why someone else was drafted in.. but still a mystery remains about just how far production got with Stuart’s graphics. It is possible that some code was done which featured some of the original concepts which were before Heartland ever existed.
All that has been found so far is all/most of the artwork which Stuart did for the game. Recently uncovered on the Megatree disks which Retro Gamer have released. These have been put into a slideshow for people to see on a real C64 or through emulation, otherwise the screenshots tell all you need to know.
More research and information required on this particular title, of which we hope to gain from Stuart himself very soon. Possibly there is more to find, but then its always possible also that this was all that was ever started before the game took a new direction. Time will tell.
More information required… but a sneak peak available…
A nice looking preview of a puzzler with a strange name. This is another clone of the simple ‘Pairs’ concept, with nothing really new to add, apart from a different front end and some nice graphics.
At the time, this kind of game was rife on the C64 market, and was being produced for mail order companies after the C64’s commercial death.
This never turned up as a full release, but then there is an argument if its actually already complete or not. The original release by LSD was back in 1996, and only released as a preview, and it doesn’t seem to be lacking on many features so far.
The developer Artur Torun got in touch in June 2022, and confirmed that it was only released as a preview and never finished. The original plan was to add more levels with different graphic styles and difficulty levels. Tragically, the graphics artist Toush (Krzysztof Dobek) passed away in 2007.
Artur found our page when thinking about resurrecting the game, to polish and release a final version. It is hoped that Artur does indeed go ahead, as it would be wonderful to see the game fully finished after around 25 years. Watch this space!
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