Games That Weren't

It’s that time of the year again, when we dig out some more findings to present for a large Christmas update. Apologies for the slowness of updates this year, but another project has taken priority of late. I hope this makes up for things. Merry Christmas everyone and all the best for 2018!

Q*Bert’s Qubes conversion found!

A shock recovery, thanks to Scott Stilphen, who obtained a rare late preview of the long lost C64 conversion of Q*Bert’s Qubes. It’s here ready for you to check out!

Q*Bert’s Qubes

New Zealand Story V1 preview found!

A very early preview of Choice Software’s C64 conversion of New Zealand Story has been recovered and added to the GTW archives.

New Zealand Story V1

Big Top – Full game recovered

A great little 1984 educational title has been preserved thanks to Scott Stilphen and Robin Ballweg with some lovely music.

Big Top

Outrun 2 – an abandoned pitch demo added

Video images were attempting to pitch for a new Outrun 2 game, before Outrun Turbo or Europe came about. Check out their preview and mockup screens.

Outrun 2

Three new full games from Francesco Milioni added!

Thanks to Francesco Milioni, we have three new unreleased games for you which were meant for release on an Italian compilation tape, but was cancelled due to the dwindling C64 market.

Flock, Traffico, Memo

Take Em Out – early preview found

A very early, but neat looking Operation Wolf clone has been recovered thanks to Dean Hickingbottom.

Take Em Out

Garfield – Early build found

A very early build of Garfield by The Edge has been found on Mat Sneap’s workdisk, as well as the game’s map designer.

Garfield V1

Runner – Mat Sneap assets found

Unknown art assets by Mat Sneap for a game called Runner has been recovered. Who was the coder and was it started?

Runner

Molecale more graphics recovered

Some additional hi-res mockups have been recovered of this intriguing Video Images game that never was.

Molecale

Egy kis kiruccanás – adventure preview recovered

Thanks to Csaba Virág, Hungarian text adventure preview Egy kis kiruccanás (A Little Fling) has been recovered and added to the archive.

Egy kis kiruccanás

Spellcast pre-Zzap preview added

A preview of Spellcast, used to send round to companies for interest, has been added to the archives. Only very slight differences present.

Spellcast

Competition Karate

Thanks to the wonderful preservation efforts of Jerry Kurtz, an additional bonus is the complete preservation of an obscure 1984 karate game called Competition Karate. As it is a released game, we haven’t created a GTW entry for it, so here are both the download and scans. Enjoy!

• Competition Karate game
• Competition Karate scans

Unpreserved demos and cracks

Whilst sifting through some developer disks of Dean Hickingbottom and Cory Kin, we found a number of demos (a lot of Compunet demos), tunes and cracks which don’t seem to be preserved at present. We may have missed a few, but here is an extra bonus anyway:

Bonus unpreserved demos + cracks

Then finally, a digest of updates and new entries since our last site update:

21 new entries added

Alien Garden, Alpha Runner, American Dream, Avant-Garde titles, Commando 88, Drive, Italian pirated games, Kukulcan, Learning and Training Systems software, MicroLeague Sports titles, Monster Maths, Playful Professor – Word Factory, Pontoon, Pop Quiz 85, Secrets of the Magi, Sherwood Forest, Squire, Sword of Sodan, Tangram, The Elysian Fields, Unknown football game

53 updates added

3 2 1 quiz game (confirmation of existence), Ace Attacker (scans added), All Terrain Gardener (added alternative name), Alloyrun (sfx credit), Alvin & The Chipmunks (competition scan added), Arcane Quest (full game preserved), Black Bandit (details from author added), Bubbles (notes added from author), Chelsea of the South Sea (spelling fix), Coven (scan added), Crossfire Canyon (added photos), Delphian (coder confirmation + article link), Edward Randy (scan added), Enterprise (credit + more details added), Escape from London (author resurface news), F-86 Sabre Strike (added notes), Formula 1 Simulator (new scans added), Gi Hero (sfx credit), Hit and Run (game preserved!), Illusions (download added), IndeflataBall (additional builds added), Into The Nature (confirmed released), It came from the desert (scan added), Isolation (confirmed released), Judge Death (more scans added), Karnov V1 (rare screenshots added), Katakis (scans added), Last Ninja 4 (additional development notes), Legend Of Kyril (info added from Joerg Droege), Lock On (scans added), Mega Games (more scans added), Miami Vice (scans added), Milk Tray Game (credits fix), Minder (review + screenshot added), Nighthunter (sfx credit), Obliterator (new screenshots), Orel Hershiser’s Strike Zone (new scans), Play and Learn series (new scans), Savage Platforms (tidied up review), Ski Run (game preserved), Sophisticated games (few titles preserved), Squad One (found and confirmed released), Star Fighter (advert added), Super League Manager (scans added), T-Wrecks (scans added), The Future Zone (scan added), The Micro Zone (scan added), Trojan (reverse engineer details), Twice Shy (screenshots added + scans), Tyger Tyger (details added by Gary Liddon), Warlord (confirmation of existence + credits), Who Dares Wins (update about game release), Zynon (sfx credit)

Sorry for the lack of updates recently everyone – i’ve been really swamped on another project recently, but we have been preparing for our annual Christmas update, where we have a few bits and pieces for you as well as a digest of updates that have been happening in the background.

As an early Christmas present, we thought we’d share a recently recovered full version of Silverbird’s IndeflataBall with you, thanks to Cory Kin finding a last batch of disks which contained the final edition.

https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/indeflataball/

Next update will be the Christmas update itself with some more unreleased games and previews, along with some recovered CNET demos which may not have been preserved yet.

Enjoy!

Had another few more bits and pieces come through over the past week or so – so here is another digest of recent updates – including two new full games (Equinox + Soda Shop) that were recovered by Peepo, Tom Roger Skauen and Triad, thanks to Rich Hinton for providing the disks.

Also – check out Streethawk for two of the most detailed screenshots we’ve seen yet of the game.   Discovered on the Spanish release cover for the Amstrad version of all places!

If you think the font looks familiar, then you’d be right – the same font was used eventually in Top Gun.  So something of the game did surface! 😉

5 new entries added

Equinox, Maze Patrol, Soda Shop, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Liquidator

5 updates added

C64GS cartridge titles, Chelsea of the South Sea, Lauren of the 25th Century, Pyramid, Streethawk

Just a quick post to put back up the Alligata Master disks and Maniacs of Noise SFX files that we had on the old site.  It seemed a shame they were tucked away out of sight – so here they are again below.  Some basic details follow for each.

Way back in 2005, James Grayson contacted GTW and informed us that he some years back bought a box full of Alligata labelled floppies at a boot fair in Sheffield. A quick photo of some of the disks showed that there was possibly about 5 GTW’s there waiting to be archived. James kindly loaned GTW all of the disks to try and archive what it could in the hope of finding more GTW titles. Disks were sadly in such poor condition from their previous owner, that they would not read properly and required a week’s worth of careful cleaning and restoration to get reading again. Here are all of what we found below in the zip archive.  Scans follow in the gallery.

With the Maniacs of SFX files – these were found thanks to disk copying by Pete (Myth) Baron. Due to his work with the Maniacs Of Noise with Myth, they MoN had sent Pete a disk load of music and SFX previews. Unknown to Pete, on this disk were a number of SFX demos never heard before. This included rare SFX for 2400AD and Nighthunter, but also some unused SFX in a selection of released titles like Myth and Outrun Europe. Disk image below:

Downloads

Alligata-masters

SFX_Maniacs

Alligata disk scans