This game was found to be fully released and can be downloaded from here.
http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=4298&d=45&h=0
Many thanks to Ramos for this one!
Case closed!
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
L.A. Sunset
Advertised in many magazines, this was a title being sold by Anik Microsystems… however only two Anik games exist and seem to have been released on the C64.
The advert describes the game as follows:
“Could it be the final sunset for L.A as the returning Space Shuttle goes out of control?”
The game itself could be really anything, but maybe its a Lunar Landa style game or something? The game was being sold very cheaply at around £4, compared to the higher price of their titles in Gamebase. Maybe this was a simple BASIC game that was being sold for quick profit?
We know very little more about this than the above, a lot more research needed and hopefully we will find some of the people who used to work for Anik.
More soon we hope…
Lasertrain
We don’t know much about this game, but apparently a C64 version was being done anyway. The Amiga version is in fact missing also, so was it a case of the company going bust?
A little more is learnt about the title thanks to Fabrizio, but not much at this stage:
From C+VG issue 85 page 11, November 1988:
“You could have been forgiven for ignoring The Big Apple, a new software label that first surfaced months ago promising big things, but released only one game. They’re hitting their stride now, though, with Lasertrain (the tale of an alien attack on an Intercity!), Harrier Strike Mission 2and adventure game The Fool’s Errand all due for immediate release, and Thud Ridge (a Vietnam flight sim) with Creased Lightning, ’60s hot rod street racing, waiting in the wings. We haven’t played any of them properly yet, but it will be interesting to see what develops.”
Thanks to Anonymous Contributor, there was a bit more on this game in Swedish magazine Datormagazin, issue 13 1988, page 6, top of 4th column that revealed a bit more about the game itself:
“Lasertrain: You are the pilot of a future space train and must bring your passengers safely from planet to planet without the space pirates injuring them or taking your cargo.”
Then ST Action mentioned more in November 1988 on page 6:
“Big Apple are releasing quite a few games onto the ST market between now and Spring 1989. Lasertrain (release date early ’89) sets you in command of a train of the future, navigating your way through eight space stations in the outer stratosphere.”
Finally, Danish magazine Games Preview, issue 1 1989 page 6, has this to say:
“Lasertrain: a fast-moving action game with lots of 3D action. In the game you are the locomotive driver of a futuristic high-speed train, which thunders through tunnel complexes on its journey between 8 space stations.”
Not much on this we know, but hopefully we will find out more soon!
Laser Cycle
Lazer Cycle was a tron clone that was written for the BBC Micro by System 3. For years it has been suggested that C64 version was in production.
It was confirmed however in 2015 by Jazzcat and Mark Cale that the game was never considered for the C64 at all. Therefore we can close the case on this one!
Lakers Vs Celtics
Could this have been Rob Hubbard’s final C64 swansong?… or is this just vapourware?… A few questions for our next entry, which is based on a popular basketball rivalry. This game was first released on the PC, and then later on the Megadrive platform.
We have had a lead which suggests that a C64 version was being developed, but have no clear evidence that this was the case just yet. It could be that it was planned, but then EA decided to abandon the C64 in favour of the later 16-bits.
A lot more research needed, but it might be an open and shut case very soon. Or will it help unearth a long lost Hubbard tune?…
We can dream maybe?…
Ladders To Learning
This is a series of games which were being released by McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd back in 1984 time. Occasionally the games surface on Ebay, and a selection of the games can be found on Gamebase. But sadly these are still missing:
- Ladders to Learning – Correct Spelling II
- Ladders to Learning – Explorers I (Subsections are missing due to data corruption)
- Ladders to Learning – Explorers II
- Ladders to Learning – Explorers III (Subsections are missing due to data corruption)
- Ladders to Learning – Geography USA
- Ladders to Learning – Grids Galore
- Ladders to Learning – Probability
- Ladders to Learning – The Long Drive
Many have since been found and are now in Gamebase – the above are what are considered to be left to find and preserve. Can you help us?
Division 1 and 2, The Water Cycle and also Graphs 2 were found and backed up thanks to Kevin Steele. These have been submitted to Gamebase, but can also be downloaded here if you wish to see the files. We’ve crossed them off the above list, as they are no longer GTW’s, but confirmed as official releases. Hangman IV and Dictionary Use were recently found in June 2011 by Peter Weighill and are being preserved right now.
Can you help at all and help us preserve these remaining titles?
Lunar Jetman
Lunar Jetman was part of a huge classic genre on the Spectrum which spawned a few games by Ultimate featuring the Jetman character. The range of games however never quite made their way onto the C64. Spectrum users had Jetman, whereas C64 users had to make do with Sir Arthur Pendragon in a series of games.
However, little do many C64 users know, but Lunar Jetman was actually in development on the C64 (albeit for a short period) back in 1985. What might be more surprising is the fact that the conversion was being carried out by SID’s own maestro, Martin Galway. As well as being a superb musician, he could code a bit too you know!
During some quiet times for Martin back in 1985, attempts were made to convert the classic to give himself something to do. With the conversion and Martin’s perseverance, nothing was sacrificed from the spectrum game. This was not a pure spectrum port, but coded from scratch with all original screen dimensions kept. A very faithful conversion was what Martin wanted with nothing spared, and that was what was exactly emerging.
After less than a months work, Martin’s career took off as a musician at Ocean Software after impressing with his BBC tunes and other freelance tunes. Coding games was put aside as this career blossomed, which meant that the C64’s Lunar Jetman was promptly shelved and long forgotten about.
In later years, Martin passed all his disks to the guys at C64 Audio to fully archive all his tunes in their full glory. The surprise finding was a disk labelled “Lunar Jetman”. Upon examining the disk, a series of sources files were found. After compiling the sources, it was found that all the score panels were working; sprites were animating and the screen scrolled a bit, but sadly nothing was ever near playable. But it was Lunar Jetman on a C64.
Chris Abbott paid for all the disks and C128D to be shipped from Texas especially, so thanks to Chris the game was uncovered along with Jason (Kenz) Mackenzie.
The game is a mere glimpse that a translation of the game would have boded well on the C64, and that there was more of Jetman on C64 screens than once thought. Check out what it looks like, its source code and also a scan of the original work disk label. A tragic shame it never quite made it, but its one to maybe think “What if..”
You can check out what was created for yourself, where included is all the source code used to build it all. The late Jason Kelk very kindly compiled everything up, and Jason’s detail of the disk content can be found in the zip archive with the sources to explain what was on the disk (Its been ported exactly how it was on Martin’s disk).
Martin himself got in touch via the comments in August 2022, and confirmed that this was not a serious conversion job and was just him “screwing around”. Ultimate never knew about it. It found it neat to have the original graphics, so gave it a try and doesn’t think it would have ever got much further. He lost interest just a few months later in January 1986 when the Amiga came out.
So this is all that ever was and is very much a case closed!
Liberator
A nice little single screen western OP Wolf style shooter, with the added ability to choose your route of travel. This game was also slightly similiar in some aspects to Tusker. There was to be some puzzle solving elements in the game.
The graphics are great, and so is the animation and music throughout.
The plot is unknown, but the game plays quite well and feels like something commercial.
The game was never completed as the programmer had to go into an Acadamy, and so the project was sadly shelved. It seems that according to Zsolt, the game actually got a bit further than what is currently released and the sources may still exist with some extra features currently not seen.
The mystery has been a bit of a jigsaw, with bits and pieces of Liberator getting released everywhere separately. One of the game’s intro pictures was released into a graphics compo, and two tunes are currently in the HVSC which are linked with the game (This includes the tune in the preview, and an additional tune which was intended for the game’s title screen). Check out the MUSIC DOWNLOAD above to hear the tunes.
The preview seems quite big, and there are plenty of screens of action to play around with. A small indication of just how close this game was to being completed.
Hopefully in the future we will hear more from Zsolt, and maybe other developers from the game to find out more about this mysterious title… maybe even find more parts which are missing.
A fun little western game…
Lethal 2
Soon after the success of getting Lethal released under the Alternative label, Neil Kendall got to work on a quick sequel to the game.
For reasons currently unknown to GTW, the game never got released and was left sat on the graphic man’s old work disks until 2004, when it was finally recovered.
Lethal 2 is essentially the same as Lethal 1, but with new maps and some improvements to the graphics. Sonically the game is the same, and this would have probably been changed had the game been accepted for commercial release.
It is assumed that Alternative were approached with this title, but possibly it was a little too similar to the first game for their liking. Possibly Neil didn’t quite finish the transition to the sequel, we’ll soon find out I hope.
The game is a playable Bounder style game, and its unfortunate that it never did make it. I’m glad for Neil that the game was salvaged from a faulty disk, and the errors in the game were easily corrected by Neil himself.
Neil’s work is now immortalised, and what was possibly a only copy left in an attic, is now a wide spread GTW. Of course, this can only really be thanks to Ian Coog for getting the game fixed to work once more.
A quick sequel, but worthy and unfortunate not to get released…
Last Ninja V1
A controversial entry originally, but which was eventually the result of a development which became too difficult for the original team to complete. Hugh Riley and Mark Cale shed light on the original Last Ninja and what happened….
Casting things back, it was claimed some years ago that Last Ninja was originally a game by an Hungarian team, which was to have System 3 as the publisher. The rumor was that the team had sent System 3 an almost complete version for testing, and System 3 finished it off and published it.
Further to this, another Hungarian told the story of how he spoke to a mathematician who claimed to be part of the original LN development crew. The mathematician backed up his claim by demonstrating the Level editor system used to place trees and other objects into the game.
The contributor (who wanted to remain nameless) went on to say…
“I couldn’t believe my eyes! He told me, that for example Shogun on the last level moves so “dizzy”, because they couldn’t finish it. They sent the program out for testing (or checking to Germany or England I’m not quiet sure), and they stole the whole program, after they finished quickly and released before the Hungarian group finished the same.
If it’s true, than what a scandal! He told me, that originally you didn’t have to throw a gas bomb under the dragon’s nose – the only thing you had to to is to avoid its flames (and that’s right I downloaded the LN preview). He told me moreover, that originally you could kill the spider in the dungeons by jumping onto his “back”. That remained just a plan. He also told me the date of the programming works. Unfortunately I forgot it, but, I think from August 1986 to March or April 1987.”
Was any of this true? Well, it was declared as complete rubbish.
The story developed and became clearer a few years ago as Kai Spitzley, webmaster of the excellent Last Ninja archives, shared findings, including the following from Hugh Riley (Graphics artist for LN1 and 2)…
“When I came onto Ninja 1 it was being programmed for System 3 by a subsidiary of Andromeda in Hungary (Caesar the Cat? now there’s going back!).
Bob Stevenson had done some mock up screens for the adverts then left. I spent 3 weekends in Budapest (still behind the iron curtain) where it became apparent that their programmers were having difficulties.
They were programming in forth (used for washing machines) so back in London John Twiddy was brought in to rewrite the code and we worked together in Mark Cale’s (Mr System 3) front room and various other places. By the time we finished Twiddy reckoned there was only one byte left in the machine which explains the crappy ending.”
GTW also got in touch with one of the original developers of Last Ninja, Istvan Bodnari, who confirmed the level editor, but didn’t know its existence now. Nothing was mentioned about the game being stolen though, so we believe that nothing bad actually happened. He even confirmed that the graphics were all supplied by System 3, so it confirms Andromedia were developing the game FOR System 3, and it was not a game that System 3 were trying to purchase from them.
Although we now had both Hugh and Istvan confirming the real story, Mark Cale also came in to set the record straight as well in November 2015:
“I wanted to put a close to the idea that Hungarian team wrote and finished 85% another Last Ninja. Hugh Riley will tell you they tried and failed. Currently we are making a number of videos from people we have worked with including Andromeda about all our games.
Andromeda’s Robert Stein will state on video that he refunded all the advances we gave on Last Ninja as they failed to even get a ninja sprite Hugh drew to animate let alone fight. The only game ever finished by them was IK on the Atari ST and that was only after I sent both Archer Maclean and Bob Stevenson to Budapest.
Hugh and I did 3 trips to Hungary and gave up on Last Ninja when we found out they were writing the game in Forth which is almost as slow as basic. The screen shot you showed was the original Bob Stevenson concept shot which we had published in magazines like C&VG announcing the game. I’m sure Hugh, Archer and Bob can all tell you their thoughts on the quality of game programming at the time.”
Frustratingly there was no Ninja character to move or fight with other characters!
So there we have it. We’re unsure how some of the original stories came to fruition, but it is a chapter that can sort of be closed. The video itself surfaced a few years ago at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOzcDPCNd_I for you to check out (in Hungarian). Regardless of the controversies there could well be another version of Last Ninja out there, and we would love to find this early version. But it sounds like essentially it would just be a broken version of the game we all know and love, with the same graphics and maps that Hugh had done. It would be only interesting from a historical point of view.
The large screenshot with rather different looking background elements and a score panel which is vastly different in the gallery was confirmed to be an original concept screenshot. This was drawn by Bob Stevenson and was published in magazines like CVG announcing the game. When Bob left the project, Hugh took over and re-did some of the panels and graphics, but essentially the end result was fairly similar.
Interestingly, in the sleeve of International Karate, along with Last Ninja – two other further titles are announced for 1986 in the form of Last Ninja: Return of the Last Ninja and Revenge of the Last Ninja. Martin/Stadium64 wonders if the two parts would have just been some of the later levels split into a sequel of some kind. They didn’t get far anyway, possibly after the first game got delayed like it did.
Recently in 2021, we have added the Zzap Sampler tape and various demos disk (thanks to The Last Ninja archives) to the downloads, as it contains a non-playable preview of The Last Ninja that features a number of sprites and backgrounds which never featured in the final game. There is also a slightly different game panel too. Marcin ‘Tenchi’ Świętoniewski kindly provided versions where the panel had no corruption.
I wondered if there is any way of making the demo playable, so other screens could be uncovered. Well, in 2022, Luigi Di Fraia confirmed that only the 4 locations shown were present, after decoding the integrator file for the demo.
A massive thanks to Jazzcat, Mark Cale and Hugh Riley for finally clearing up the story behind the game!
