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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Ivanhoe

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

In the year of 1987, Computer Novels should have been released a game named ‘Ivanhoe’, but it was never to be released. The Commodore 64-version should have been released in October 1987 and the Amiga-version the next month.

Computer Novels only released The Three Musketeers but they have planned to release more than this, it sadly looks as though they probably went bankrupt.

The Advert for Ivanhoe, which Martin/Stadium 64 scanned from the November-issue 1987 of the Swedish magazine ‘Datormagazin’. The magazine had several notes about this game, unfortunately showing at least one screenshot from the Amiga-version which looked pretty nice.

There is a recent link to American Action, which was a Swedish company based on Malmoe. It seems that the company had some economical problems in the past, but at the time of this game (Autumn 1987) – things had changed for the better. Recently we’ve added who we think were behind the game, thanks to Twoflower.

It was rumoured that a special version was also being made for the C128, so there could be two versions to find. All we have to look at is a possible C64 screenshot, but it looks rather Amiga’ish to me.

Nothing else is known, whether the game was actually completed or why exactly the game was never released. No credits are currently known, though its likely that it would be the people behind Computer Novel’s other C64 games.

One thing which is quite interesting is the Ivanhoe loading music found in HVSC. Something found anyway of the game :-)

A feature appeared in Swedish magazine Datormagazin, issue 7 1987, page 4, with P Diab at publisher American Action which adds a few snippets, where they say:

“We are planning to release the Computer Novels series for all computers I just mentioned [previous passage: Atari 520 ST, Amiga, C64, C128, PC]. This also includes all other games. The Computer Novels series will also be published in special editions for the C128. It won’t be a direct conversion from the C64, more like a Deluxe version of the C64 game.”

Followed by:

“Maybe it’s time for you to say a few words about Computer Novels…

Computer Novels is just a name for a series of games we publish. Another name we use is Action and there’s no doubt about what type of games will be included in that series, right? The Computer Novels series is based on old well-known novels. Within the next months “Ivanhoe” and “Around the World in 80 Days” will be published, all three of which are, as you know, two [sic] very well-known novels. Additionally, we have already published “The Three Musketeers”.

For the game, a little more detail was then mentioned about the style:

“Will “Ivanhoe” and “Around the world…” be in the same style as “The Three Musketeers”?

Well, more or less, they won’t be action games and no text adventures either. “Ivanhoe” will contain 6 different action parts in the vein of “Defender of the Crown”. “Around the world in 80 days” will also contain action parts, plus there will be a time limit hovering over the players, those 80 days you know…”

Was anything ever started, and can anything be found?

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It’s Rory!

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

This was recently brought to my attention by Jason Kelk, who spotted an advert for the game “It’s Rory” in an early Llamasoft advert in 1985.

We know very little about the game itself and just have this little portion from the advert with the game in. It was around the time that Zzap had slated Mamma Llama, and so we thought that due to the negative reviews of this game, Jeff cancelled the Rory game.

Embarresingly, I did ask Jeff at one of the PLAY Expo events several years ago, and he confirmed that no game ever existed – but I forgot to update the page!

However, in January 2022 – the advert popped up in conversation and thanks to Vinny Mainolfi, he flagged up that Jeff had the following to say:

“Oh he didn’t have his own game, we just felt we ought to include him with the other beasts just because he was such a c**t.”

Well, there you have it – no game was ever started and so it is case closed!

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It Came From Hell!

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

It Came From Hell was to be a sequel to the cool Bomber game that was given away with Commodore Format many moons ago. This was to feature the same kind of thing, but with vastly improved graphics.

Shaun recently found his work in 2011, and mentioned the following in the production notes on CSDB:

"Created pre 1997:
Vidcom 64/Omega [1986]
Released 2011

Some graphics created for "It Came From Hell" aka: Bomber II
The whole scene was inspired heavily by the Robert Williams painting "Appetite for Destruction".

The plan was to have an orange monster rise up from behind a fence, and begin spitting out mini skull and crossbones. The Player would be required to catch the skull and crossbones using a contraption linked to the centre of the Earth. Failure to capture a skull and crossbones would have resulted in the mini creature to hit the pavement and exit the screen to either the left or right, and contaminate the Earth.

The I.C.F.H. Logo was to be displayed over the Background using sprites. The Logo would have alternated with a Hi-Score Table.
The I.C.F.H. Logo was included as part of Forgotten and Found 2, although I also appears during GFX-Col.1 [logos]

The Background was deliberately drawn to be easy on the eye, and use pastel shades of colour, to contrast with the Sprites.

I was never really happy with the original Bomber graphics as they were created in a hurry. "It Came From Hell" graphically offered a better game.
Sadly no code ever happened."

Unfortunately as a result, this is it!…. graphics for a project abandoned before any code could be written. It is an interesting glimpse though of what may have been, and we assume what could have been a covermount game for Commodore Format very late in the day.

Case closed!

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Italian Night 99

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

Another potential great from the Italian game giants Simulmondo, and a nice looking icon driven adventure game. Unfortunately, you can only look at was going to be, as the preview is only a rolling demo, featuring two shots of the actual game.

I haven’t actually seen this game mentioned in any press over here in the UK, but maybe someone from Italy has heard more on this game, possibly from the Italian version of Zzap!64?

Well, GTW received some information that the game was to be a kind of action adventure which was heavily influenced by the movie Blade Runner. A few preview shots at the time were actually scans from publicity photos of the movie.

According to rumours, Simulmondo got into a bit of trouble over a deal with a book publisher. Italian Night 99 got caught up in the mess, and was never to be seen again. It was rumoured that Italian Night 99 was a faked game, but Marco Das found an advert in 1000 Miglia for the game (see scans), with text that translated as follows:

Italian night 1999
Milan, February 18, 1999
Subject: Assignment # 220 (on accident investigation)
Investigator: R. Duomo (CYBORG SIMULATED)
Investigation # 220 commissioned by Carmen Erni, P.za S. Ambrogio 4
Informations about the event: See attachments
Note: The deadline for the handing over of the report: 08.00 of 19 February 1999
Dynamic: Beware off cyberpunks and interactive women
GOOD WORK AGENT CATHEDRAL

Dr Strange/Atlantis in late 2014 confirmed with the author that the project was dropped just after the first preview was released. No further development was made on the game. It was dropped due to lack of time and interest. Sadly any development disks with the game are long gone, so this is pretty much all that now exists.

Interestingly though, an Amiga version was released – though planned Atari ST and PC editions were never to be seen either like the C64 edition.

In late August 2021, Martin/Stadium64 got in touch to provide a rare scan of a newsletter that was released by Simulmondo that talks about Italian Night 1999 – now added to the archive.

Pretty much a closed case now!

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I-spy For Children

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Alex Ross-Shaw

One more Channel 8 Software ‘Game That Wasn’t’ for the collection, I, Spy for Children was part of a slew of planned released by Channel 8 Software, several of which never saw the light of day.

Judging from the name it seems I, Spy for Children would have been designed to help children learn a vocabulary, probably linking it to pictures too.

As for why it went unreleased, we have no idea. Hopefully someone connected to the company can come forward and give us more information.

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Island Of Monsters

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Another game in the same week released by Hermit Software, and just as with their Mortal Kombat 2 conversion, they stun again with Island of monsters.

The game was started by Hungarian crew Hermit Software back in 1998, and unfortunately was never to be finished. However, a good chunk of the game is infact playable where you can fight in a Barbarian 2 style game with awesomely detailed graphics throughout. The main characters in the game especially are very well defined.

In addition to the playable parts, there is a really nice animated introduction sequence which overall gives this preview some real polish compared to some unreleased titles we have in the GTW vaults.

We’re not entirely sure why the game was cancelled, but we are convinced it was done as a labour of love for the machine. There is rumour that the developer sold his C64, and only recently got one back in around 2001, where he was able to dig out some of his unreleased works.

This is a fantastic preview which will impress you very much and is certainly well worth seeing! We hope to learn more about it soon!…

A fantastic preview of a fantastic looking game…

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Iron Maiden

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

Iron Maiden is another game which was originally planned by EBES when the C64 was dying out commercially around 1994 time. The game was mentioned in a note file from around 1995 where Russ talks about various games which EBES planned to do if people would support them.

At present we are not quite sure what the game would have been about, obviously it would have had the guys from Iron Maiden in it – but we’re not sure what type of actual game it would have been. Most likely it would have been a platforming game, but then it could have been a management sim. We need more details from Russ Michaels to see what this game was really about.

It is very likely that the game never actually got started, so we may well be looking at vapourware – but it will be worth finding out to close the case on this one. There would have likely been legal issues too using the band’s name.

Do you know any more?

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Iron Hand

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

A limited Uridium clone which eventually made it onto the Amstrad platform, along with the Atari ST and Amiga versions. This game was brought to my attention by Martin Holland, who worked on the Amstrad, ST and Amiga versions, but not the C64 version. Credits for the C64 version were unknown until Paul Clansey got in touch with GTW64 in 2012 and confirmed he was behind the game.

Paul had the following to say about the game:

“I coded the C64 version but can’t remember who did the design, graphics or music (they were hectic times and I worked with many people around that then).

I wasn’t aware that it ever got released, and hoped it wasn’t, because… from what I recollect of what the Canvas directors Ian and Gary told me (now both sadly deceased), they’d rushed the masters (for all platforms) by car to the duplicators, on the promise of a payment from a once well-known Manchester-based software label.

The payment was vital to keep Canvas going and pay employee wages. The directors returned with a 12 month driving ban for one (130+ mph on the M6) and a cheque that the software label subsequently cancelled. End of Canvas and loss of wages for employees. Incidental trivia on the game- the high score table defaults to characters from Zappa songs.”

The company was actually from Birmingham, and it was U.S. Gold, after Paul later found a confirmation letter from U.S. Gold asking him to add a high score in 1989, some 6 months after Canvas had gone under.

The game contains music by Peter Clarke, who also composed the music to Bubble Bobble and Head Over Heals. The game itself isn’t too hot, and is a poor man’s Uridium clone at this stage.

It seems that US Gold canned the game after not being happy with it. It may have not quite been finished due to rushing off with the masters, so this may well be it for the game.

However, according to Keltic Danor, this game was in fact released on a budget label called Tornado. Was this true, and does anyone have a scan?   Was Tornado a US Gold based budget label that eventually released it?   The Amiga version was actually released it seems:  http://hol.abime.net/5000

But there is currently no evidence of an original out there – so was the Amiga version leaked too?

In June 2020, contributor Nicola Ferrarese got in touch after purchasing what was the unused Iron Hand artwork created by artist Alan Craddock. Alan has very kindly allowed us to upload the artwork scan he made to this page, so here is a glimpse of how the cover would have looked! Oddly, it seems to heavily focus on a helicopter as the main image – so it doesn’t really cover the game brief.  Was Iron Hand perhaps to have been more complex with different vehicles, but was simplified due to time?

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Iron Fish

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Found hiding on a bunch of old Compunet disks by Viktor Vargor came this interesting little preview of a Submarine game by none other than Mike (Kernal) Berry, who later went on to create Boing!, Reckless Rufus and the other GTW, Savage Platforms.

How did we know it was by Mike?… Well, hazarded a guess and apart from the fact that the disk image had Mike’s name, it was also full of all his demos and nothing else. Oh, and Mike himself confirmed that this was his game :-)

The game simply consists of a 2/3 sprite yellow submarine on a single screen with a bit of scenary. I imagine that the game would have later scrolled and been similiar to Airworf, but underwater.

This preview is lacking on playability, and the main ship is the only thing that is interactive. The coloured blocks present are there for testing the collision detection, which it seems Mike must have been trying to tweak at the time.

When asked about the game, Mike gave said

"Iron Fish wasn’t really marketed for anyone really. I knocked it up during a day of particular boredom.

I had fancy ideas about creating fancy water effects and giant mechanical fish (a little like the one in Stingray!). I think I probably only spent about 2-3 days on it maximum, then life go in the way :)"

So that was it, the game never progressed any further and never got offered to any companies. Surely it would have done had the game been finished. This was merely a project which Mike started and lost interest in, as do many programmers with various projects.

The game essentially is a lost relic of Mike’s programming past, and is a small indication of some of the early thoughts that Mike had during his C64 coding time. A shame it never got complete, but there you go :)

All that remains is a main sprite and test gfx… Case closed…

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