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.

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Kick Off 2 Cartridge

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

During 1990 when Commodore was planning its launch of the ill fated C64GS console, a string of top developers signed up to support the console and the prospect of ridding of many a horrendous multiload by using the Cartridge format. One such developer was Anco, with a planned enhanced version of their Kick Off 2 title which had been already released. The released game had recieved quite poor ratings, so the cartridge version was to rid of these problems and create something a little more closer to the successful Amiga version.

For a start, the game was to be given a fantastic new front end and menu system. There was rumour of somekind of management system to be built and a much stronger game engine and set of improvements throughout by Ben Hayes (Both from Enigma Variations at the time). Moppe was to be behind the music for the game, and produced a fantastic digi tune ready for the game which managed to sneak out and is now sitting nicely in HVSC. There are also some unnamed tunes in the Sonic Graffiti folder in HVSC which could well have been tunes for the game (Management section in particular).

Sadly the game never quite got past the early development stages, and it was reported to be quite a tough time. Ben Hayes, who is mainly known for his music for Sonic Graffiti, was actually behind a lot of the programming and once told Commodore Scene fanzine that the development was hell and especially with the menu system which was being produced. He recently got in touch with GTW directly and shed some more light on the development, mentioning that the addition of a decent scanner was one of many problems. However it was at some stage starting to look really nice, but not a nice first game project to cut your teeth on. Essentially fixes were being bolted over the existing code, where as the game may have been better suited being started from scratch.

Ben eventually left EV before the game could be finished off, and apparently Mark Greenshields picked up the project to finish off and according to Finlay got all of the management code complete. Just how integrated everything was, Mark couldn’t remember as it was a long time ago. Before the game could be inished off, it was found that the C64GS was not a viable format afterall and Anco pulled the plug. Parts of the code reused in the NES/GB version for the menu systems and what not.

Unfortunately it is unlikely that the game ever survived, and Ben confirms that he lost all his disks in a flood at his friend’s house. There is a slight possibility that Ben has a stray disk out there somewhere but its unlikely. Mark Greensheilds offered hope that he may still have some remains, that he’ll happily let GTW take a look at, but its early days yet and we now wait to see what Mark may uncover…

Ah well, at least we have the music, and the memories… for now maybe?…

Will it be extra time for this title?…

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King Of Chicago

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

Yet another Cinemaware game which never quite made it on the C64. This time a mobster game based in Chicago, and following the same style of play as with the other Cinemaware releases.

As with the SDI title, King Of Chicago was advertised in the various computer magazines, and is rumoured to have had a C64 screenshot present. In 2014, site contributor Nate found the magazine advert, which lists the shots as C64 based … so a C64 version DOES exist!

The game was fully completed and released on the Amiga, though the C64 conversion sank without trace. Again, this could have been due to Cinemaware moving away from the 8-bit market and fully into 16bit.

Credits are currently unknown, but it is assumed that the same guys behind Defender Of The Crown and Rocket Ranger would have been behind this too (And SDI). A US Sales catalogue shows the game as for sale too.

More research is needed, but so far Paul Koller has uncovered a rare screenshot of the game on the C64… and it looks as if it would have lived up to the same graphical qualities of the other Cinemaware C64 releases.

In late September 2024, Ken Van Mersbergen spoke with Doug Sharp, the programmer of all versions of King of Chicago. Doug confirmed that they did C64 art mockups for the marketing people, but then quickly determined that the C64 was just too small for the game, and so it was never started. They could not fit the game in 64K.

So that is it – there is sadly nothing playable to find, and only perhaps some mock up screens (which we doubt will ever be found). A case closed!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 7 Comments

Jungle Book

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Merman

Disney’s animated film of the Rudyard Kipling Jungle Book stories was a big hit, In 1985, magazine news articles promised a series of games based on the Jungle Book characters.

Other titles discussed in the same news piece were The Black Cauldron (see separate review) and Return to Oz, as well as the educational titles featuring Mickey, Goofy and Donald.

However, nothing more is currently known of what happened to the Jungle Book games. CRASH issue 18 mentions that the games were being developed by Ocean and U.S. Gold, but it is more likely that they would have been the publishers rather than the developers.

It would be turned into a console game years later, under license to Virgin.

A separate educational game known as Jungle Book Reading was released on the C64 by Spinnaker Software.

GTW’s Fabrizio suggested that Al Lowe may know more, and after some quick questioning, Al had the following to say (Sadly no leads)…

"Since Sierra never made an AGI engine that could fit on the C64, I doubt there were firm plans. But, on occasion they hired another company to just start from scratch and create whatever they could, using our games as the basis. (I know there wasa King’s Quest game done for the Nintendo like that. There may have been a version for the C64, too.)"

So no developments there… and the hunt goes on…

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Jumper

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

A platform and ladders game from 1999, which first appeared on Forum 64.de from a guy called TecM0 who released the unfinished game onto the forum. It is in assembler format, so when you get to the screen – press the "back arrow" key and then press "3" to assemble and run. Hopefully we will get a fully executable version added soon.

This was released to the world very kindly by TecM0 who had been going through old disks – although not linked in, Fanta composed music for the game which you can find in .SID format in the download package (The music was later used in Zoo Mania).

Basically you are stranded in the castle. Your quest is to go up and down ladders and on moving platforms and run for the exit. The trouble is that there are tunneling monsters trying to slow you down. If one touches you, you lose a life. This preview onlyhas two levels with no music.

It’s a nice little preview to uncover and one for people to share. Coders may want to pick up and finish it off too, which is a nice possibility. Go and check it out and see what you think. We hope to hear more about the game from the developer at some point and close the case on this one…

Why was it cancelled?…

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Jumble

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Another puzzle game which i’m not sure exactly what you have to do.

However, I can tell you that the game features some nice graphics and sound.

This game was obviously being created in the aim of being sold commercially, though a company hasn’t been named in the game.

It’s not known if a company did show interest in this game or not, or whatever happened to the game. The game looks pretty much complete at the stage you can see. Possibly just a few more level designs were needed.

Does anyone know anything about this game?…

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Judge Death

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

A 3D Operation Wolf style blaster featuring 2000 AD’s Barbie lookalike Psi-Judge Anderson gunning down the evil Judge Death’s zombie hordes. Unlike previous games of this genre, Judge Death actually showed your hand clasping the lethal Lawgiver (gun favoured by Mega City One Judges), though aiming and shooting was via the usual cross hairs.

It’s not a brilliant game by any means, but for its time it looked pretty good. The main problem with the game was that they apparently used Koala Pad to design all the backgrounds, and unfortunately the C64 did not have the power to shift them around effectively. Piranha were apparently quite annoyed off with the conversion according to graphic artist Stephen (SIR) Robertson.

The game was being developed by Hobbyte, a Hungarian team of around 10 programmers in total, who were according to Crash magazine (issue 47, December 1978, page 88), preparing the game for the ZX Spectrum, C64 and Amstrad.

Stephen was drafted in to make the graphics “Less clean”, and add some graffiti around the place. He did do some nice Dark Judges sprites in addition to his work, but these were sadly never used. Piranha software sadly went under with debts, and this game was caught up in it all. A lot of publicity went into this game, and some of this you can see within the scans area.

What is interesting is that a version of the game, seeming to feature a number of levels was released in 1989 and now credited to Novatrade. There are suggestions that they picked up the game, removed references to Judge Death and then released it in limited numbers under a new name of Horror City.

There have been suggestions of some C64 fans having purchased an original copy, though as of yet none of surfaced and we haven’t seen a box scan yet of the game. Can you help us confirm if Horror City was released in any shape or form?

Graeme Mason in November 2017 additionally had a wonderful article published on the 2000AD games, which mentions Judge Death and various other games from that era: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-11-19-a-brief-history-of-2000ads-8-bit-games

It’s all a bit of a mess, but certainly worth a look to see a piece of gaming history that has thankfully been preserved in some shape/form.

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 9 Comments

Joust

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

This is an entry for a long lost Atarisoft conversion of Joust for the Commodore 64, due for release back in 1984. The game had made it across to a variety of platforms, but the C64 game was thought to be caught up in the collapse of the company.

However, Phobos/Ready64 found a snippet in Video Game Update (August 1984 – see scans) which suggests that Jack Tramiel got Atarisoft to stop all C64 developments and focus just on Atari. It wasn’t the video game crash that caused the cancellation of titles. Thanks to Roberto Nicoletti and Phobos for the heads up.

Many believed that the conversion would end up being released by another company under the name of Jouste. However, this was just an unofficial clone written by Kim McCherry and not official at any stage.

Some years ago, GTW put up a photo of the C64 conversion that was on display at a show of some kind in the early 80’s. This proved that a conversion had been started and did indeed exist, but who was behind the conversion?

Sadly, it was unclear who the developer/artist was. The photo though had come from General Computing Corp’s Steven J Szymanski – so was it by him? Steven confirmed to GTW that it seems it was based on his very own Atari 800 version of the game, but not done by himself. He had no idea who was behind the conversion. Looking at other Atarisoft games, we suggested names such as Joe Hellesen and Tom Griner, but to no avail with regards to confirming when we tried to get in touch with them.

After hitting a bit of a brick wall, in late May 2020 – preservationist Ken Van Mersbergen got in touch and stunned us all by confirming that he had fully preserved the game. Ken explains how this happened and how he came to find the game:

“I was going through the archive of a retired programmer who used to work for Roklan Corporation and On-Time software. I was reading and converting some 8-inch CP/M disks when I came across a couple of files named JOUST on a disk containing the source code for C64 Popeye.

At the time I thought nothing of it as I was just converting the files for his digital archive. Months later I came across your site and saw that C64 Joust was never released so I sent back to the archive to see what system the Joust files were for. To my delight it turned out to be C64 Joust!”

The remarkable discovery was just the start of the hard work now involved. Ken now had to preserve the contents of the disk and try and get everything up and running once more.

“I copied the 3 files to my system and examined them. I was able to convert the HEX file to a binary file for testing and the game fired up in VICE with no problems. I then set upon converting the source code to a modern compiler (DASM). After a few days I was able to get the code to compile into a binary and run as a cartridge on a C64.”

As a result, GTW was able to share some proper screenshots of the game at long last. Ken would allow GTW to host the game, but first wanted to do a special presentation at a gaming event in the USA during September 2020. Attentions turned to trying to figure out who exactly had coded the game – sadly the source code gave no suggestions or clues.

Ken believed that Joe Hellesen was the developer at Roklan Corporation, and GTW did too – as his name was on an old Joust resource alongside the C64 conversion. Ken managed to get hold of Joe, who could not recall who programmed Joust. Attentions have now since turned to Cameron Shaffer (from On-Time Software) and GTW also wonders once more if Tom Griner may have had a part to play after all. Another theory could be that maybe it was the C64 programmer of Popeye – after all, it was found on the same disk! Hopefully in time the mystery will be solved on that front.

Well, in January 2022 it was confirmed that the game was indeed programmed by Jack Verson – who programmed the earlier iteration of Popeye that was recovered for GTW64 in 2021. This is thanks to contributor Michael and his comment added to this page.

In a video interview, he tells the story that another programmer was assigned Joust originally to complete within 5 months. He hadn’t managed to get far, so Jack had to step in, at which point he took the Atari version, disassembled it and ported to the C64 in just 3 weeks. The downside that Jack highlights is that the C64 version inherited the same bugs.

In August 2023, contributor Nick Guida was researching games that Joe Hellesen had created, and in his gameography from 2000 (for a company bio), he was listed as working on Joust as a programmer (see scans). It could be that Joe was the original programmer before Jack later took over and redid the game.

As for the game itself – GTW would wait for the release in September, but then COVID-19 would sadly see yet another show cancelled. Ken had planned to show the game at the VCFMW event, but due to the restrictions, it was never to be. As a result, Ken has very kindly allowed GTW to release the game earlier in July 2020 for you all to enjoy. Ken in the meantime continues to try and figure out who programmed the game. Here is a video of the game in action:

So finally after over 30 years, the official Joust conversion can now be played once more. It seems to be a complete conversion, with all of the key game play elements present and it is very playable overall. Quite possibly some aspects could have been better (such as the graphics and sound), which is easy to say nowadays, but it is an important piece of gaming history finally preserved none-the-less and should not be missed.

A huge thank you to Ken Van Mersbergen for his fantastic preservation work and for getting in touch with GTW to share his finding. Enjoy!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 40 Comments

Jori

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

A strange little game this, with some nice looking early graphics and main character.

This preview is at a very early stage, as you cannot really do anything apart from jump on the platforms.

It’s not known what kind of game this was going to be, and there are no credits to try and chase up.

It looks promising, but hard to tell what was being aimed for here.

More information needed!…

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Joe Blade 3

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

More of the same from Players, with the 3rd and final game in the series. The game got a release on the Spectrum and Amstrad, and got good grades to end things. The C64 version was mentioned within another Player’s game inlay and mentioned that it was coming soon.

Months past after the Spectrum and Amstrad releases, but no C64 version ever made it. Why?.. We are not sure.

For now we are assuming that the same author of the sequel on the C64 would have maybe done number 3 too. We need confirmation though. It could be another developer was assigned, but couldn’t get it finished for various reasons.

A lot more research needed, but could we find something like we did with Fungus 2?

Thanks to contributors, we have learnt that the Spectrum edition of the game did include loading instructions for the C64 edition. So it is seeming more and more likely that a C64 version is out there somewhere. And in late November 2019, Fabrizio Bartoloni dug out details of the developers from the Amstrad inlay, so we now know who was doing the conversion!

We managed to get in touch with the artist, who sadly has nothing of the game – but they confirmed that they had completed all their graphic work and handed everything over to Kevin Parker. They were surprised to learn that the game was never released.

We are now awaiting a response from Kevin to see if he may have something of the game. Watch this space!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 7 Comments

Joan Of Arc: Siege And The Sword

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

Joan of Arc was a 2D strategy based game which was eventually released in 1989 on the Amiga and ST. However, it seems that a C64 version was on the cards with this following snippet of news mentioned in The Games Machine 10/88:

“Watch out for a bigger preview next month of Rainbow Art’s epic arcade adventure quest, Joan of Art. The Dussledorf-based company have already given us Great Giana Sisters, but style although it boasts the same polished gameplay. Taking the form of a film (somewhat like Defender of the Crown et al), the game is for 16-bit first, with a Commodore 64/128 version expected. Stay tuned!”

Unfortunately as you can guess, nothing ever surfaced, so the question is whether the game ever got to any stage of converting at all, or if things were scrapped early on before anything was started. Rainbow Arts continued to produce games for the C64 up until 1991, so there is a good chance that this was started. And its a game I’m sure would have converted over just fine.

However, we are uncertain who would have been behind the conversion, so it is very much early days for this entry. A reference in https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89ric_Chahi does suggest that the game was going to be released on the C64, and that Eric Chahi was involved – but its unlikely. Or maybe not?

Also, thanks to contributor Michael Huth – an advert was printed, clearly listing the C64 version as coming soon on disk. No C64 screenshots though in the advert. Source of the advert is from Preservation64 wiki.

Do you know anything about this conversion? If so, please do get in touch!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 1 Comment