Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
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.
A short entry for an educational title starting the ominous sounding BJ the Bear, and due for release in 1984 by Commodore with support for the Magic Voice cartridge.
There were two other titles that did see release: Get Ready to Read and Get Ready for Number, though this one and Get Ready to Think have yet to surface.
We assume they are by the same developers – but were they released?
A short entry for an educational title starting the ominous sounding BJ the Bear, and due for release in 1984 by Commodore with support for the Magic Voice cartridge.
There were two other titles that did see release: Get Ready to Read and Get Ready for Number, though this one and Get Ready to Write have yet to surface.
We assume they are by the same developers – but were they released?
A very short entry for a game that doesn’t seem to have got very far at all. Well, it has got to a sort of title screen/sprite demo at this stage.
This was a racing game called Mega Race, which was due out in 1987 from a developer called Michael Svendsen.
Not much is given away about the game apart from the sprites, and that more were being designed and a layout was being thought out. We’re wondering if it ever got anywhere beyond this initial demo?
A very short entry for something which probably isn’t a proper game and was never intended as such. This is a parody on the 1942 and 1943 games, which the author clearly states they hate.
So they created this short demo which doesn’t really have anything to do at all with two very simple hi-res planes.
Its listed as a preview, but we think this is pretty much it and no full game was ever intended. Adding to the archives just for posterity.
One of the great things with hunting for unreleased games, is that they can turn up under the oddest of circumstances. When Hedning/Genesis Project got in touch to say he had found something surprising in a collection of Dutch disks, this was certainly a case of just that!
Dominion is not to be confused with the Zzap64! cover tape game of the same name, but is a sideways scrolling Delta-style shooter by the programmers of Master Blaster and Black Tiger, Mark Hughes and James Doyle. The game wasn’t really known about, but the clues were there thanks to a music demo released by Mark Tait back in the day.
After creating Master Blaster and whilst the game was being shopped around to publishers, Mark and James got to work on creating Dominion, enlisting Stephen Chandler and Peter Wolfe on graphics. Dave Baxter (a producer at Elite who then set up Micro Media) arranged for Mark Tait to do the music, but after pitching the game around – no publisher was interested unfortunately.
Dave would end up moving to U.S. Gold and got the group to convert Black Tiger, and Dominion was swiftly forgotten about for many years. That is – until a set of Dutch disks were being processed, and Hedning came across the file and initially got in touch with GTW to see if we knew anything about the game at all (which we wouldn’t have done).
Thankfully, before we could confirm anything – Hedning was able to get hold of Mark Hughes to confirm the story about the game which has been relayed above. A full creators speaks from Mark can be found below as well telling the story.
So, after over 35 years, this long lost game has been recovered, and you can play it for yourself! It is complete too – so check it out for yourself!
A short entry for a title that was flagged up in the brilliant Gremlin In the Works book, where Martin Fowler talked of working on a 2D snooker game endorsed by Stephen Hendry for Zeppelin Software that was being worked on by him and Tony Reeves at Dreamscape Designs.
The game was being developed for Commodore 64, Amiga and Atari ST and got to a 75% complete stage overall. Unfortunately, around the time – Archer Maclean released Jimmy White’s Whirlwind Snooker and Zeppelin failed to secure Stephen’s name for the game (as he won the World Championship that year and became too expensive).
Zeppelin wouldn’t fund the development any further, and so the game was ultimately cancelled and never saw the light of day. The question is whether anything may still exist today, so we hope to learn more in the near future!
Our next entry into the GTW archives is a slightly controversial title due to its rather risqué advertisement that featured in the Italian press at the time. Ifigonia was an erotic/adult themed text adventure, with graphics created by artist Mauro Mazza. The game was based on a poem from 1928.
After a few adverts for the ZX Spectrum, C64 and Amstrad CPC – the game disappeared without a trace, and some even wondered if it was a hoax of some kind. One magazine (Sperimentare) showed a rather different looking cover-art case and talked about the game. We don’t think they actually review it, as the details about the title are quite vague. It is mentioned though that the graphics would be a mixture of comic-like graphics and animations throughout.
The question is whether the game actually ever saw completion or release on any of the three platforms overall? At the moment, there is no evidence of any copies sneaking out – but who knows, perhaps one or two did manage it.
There is a general feeling that it was nothing more than a sophisticated April Fools joke, though the address for the company did exist and you could send off money to order the game. Damiano Gerli confirmed that the address was a computer shop that was in Milan back in the day. He’s 90% sure that the game was just a hoax or April Fools to get people to go into the shop to ask for the game.
Quattro Bit felt that the selling price was far too low, and in all their years of research – never heard of anyone ordering it. GilesGoat feels that the fact you could send off money to someone for *something* suggests that there had to be a product, otherwise it would have been stealing. The plot thickens! :)
If you know anything more about the title or can help us preserve it – please do get in touch.
A very quick entry for a game called The Pacman Strikes Back, where at the moment we have a very early title screen test thanks to Csaba Virág, who found remains of the game on a work disk originally from Csaba Einspach.
Although nothing is playable in the executable, there may be remains of the game lurking within the little source files that are present. Apparently there is a more complete and playable version out there somewhere, but sadly Csaba Einspach’s media was lost many moons ago.
The plan was to sell the game to Mastertronic in 1987, but never quite happened. Hopefully more will be recovered in the future.
A really short entry for a game that eventually surfaced as Duet on the Elite Hit-Pak collection. We believe that this was swiftly renamed as Elite couldn’t get agreement to use the Commando name on the title.
The game of course was a nice Gauntlet clone, which I personally loved playing back in the day (but I know many others would feel was terrible!). It could be the quality of the game which also caused Elite not to release individually, and straight onto a HitPak compilation.
Contributor Alfonso makes a good point that the article in our Commando 88 page suggests the licence for the sequel had gone to US Gold, who did nothing with it.
The question is whether Commando 86 was ever actually released. It certainly leaked out there with the logo, but we haven’t been able to find any commercial release of it – therefore this version of the game may have not been properly released in the shops.
Gaz Spence flagged up that issue 13 of Your Sinclair previewed the game, which was then called Commando ’87 when the game got delayed, with the same team behind the CPC version too. It seems after that point it was renamed to Duet – and currently there is no evidence that it ever snuck out commercially as a Commando game.
It seems adverts snuck out though showcasing what the cover would have looked like – see our gallery. If anyone else finds other images, please let us know. How did the game with the Commando logo sneak out?
If anyone knows anything more – please do get in touch!
A short entry for a game by Rowan Crawford. It isn’t clear what kind of game it was, though the name was influenced by Armalyte and was a very complex project that Rowan felt would take years to complete. After that realisation, focus switched to another game called Drive.
Rowan has mentioned that there is no chance the game has survived, as no WIP was ever sent to anyone. It would be a miracle to find. Hopefully we’ll learn more about it soon to update this page anyway.
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