Documenting unreleased, cancelled and prototype video games.
Welcome to Games That Weren't!
We are an unreleased and cancelled 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 games that were never released to the public. Sharing history and stories from the developers, assets and more before it is too late.
Apologies all, a bit manic at work and home this past month – so this month the update is a bit quieter than normal. Hopefully we’ll have a bit more time before the Christmas break to build up our usual large update of unreleased gems. So for this month we have:
People from Sirius, Unnamed game
Base, Bloid Bros, Tiger Road 2, Typhoon Thompson, Undead, X-Men, Zrenite
Gaming historian Damiano Gerli of The Genesis Temple in August 2021 produced a wonderful 3 part article on the history of Italian video game developer Trecision, which we highly recommend checking out if you haven’t already at https://genesistemple.com/the-history-of-trecision-software-part-i-let-the-games-do-the-talking
Within the 3rd part of the article, Damiano talks about a cancelled title named Samhain, which was in development around 2000 by the company. An in-house title that was being put together by a small team within Trecision, consisting of Federico Fasce, Marco Castrucci, Alessandro Giusti, Stefano Mariani and Tommaso Bennati.
Federico Fasce informed Damiano that the team had come to him with a FPS prototype that featured a “terrific gothic mood”. They had even taken pictures of graves from Rapallo’s cemetery at night time for textures. Federico felt though it should be more of a survival horror type game, than an actual first person shooter. Continue reading
Recently we reported on a lost SEGA MegaDrive conversion of Benefactor, which the press had wrongly attributed screenshots from another game called Hardcore.
Hardcore itself was a fantastic looking Turrican/Assassin clone developed by Digital Illusions, and was due for release on the SEGA MegaDrive. Sadly Psygnosis would pull the plug on all their 16-bit developments before the game would get a chance to be released.
In later years, thankfully the game would see release on the Mega SG as Ultracore. You can read more about this release and see the game in action thanks to Beyond The Scanline’s excellent review.
Though what of the Commodore Amiga version? Well, Hardcore was originally being developed for that platform before it was decided to move all of the work across to the SEGA Megadrive. Various previews were shown in magazines at the time, such as The One and showcasing what was looking like a great action platformer. Continue reading
Another month already, and not entirely sure where the time has gone! A slightly busier update this month, as we have gone through and tidied up some of the pages and removed a load of broken links, as well as adding our usual scan additions and small updates over the past 4 weeks. Hopefully in some way this will provide a highlight of some titles you may not have seen or read about yet.
News just in, with Undead to be put into development once more after 31 years since its cancellation. Yet another title that could escape the vaults!
Accilatem, Ace In The Hole, Acid House, Ala Software, Alien 8, Alien Syndrome V1, Alternate Reality – Missing parts, Appointment With Fear, Arcade Wizzard, Atic Atac, Atlantian Continue reading
Following on from the recent post on Cyber Fight, comes yet another 3D futuristic sports title in the shape of Retro. A title being developed for Core Design by Steve Northcott (programming) and Simon Phipps (artwork).
No doubt with a bit of inspiration from the recent success of Speedball 2, the Core Design duo had come up with a nifty 3D polygon routine and sprite algorithm to come up with a potentially winning formula (or so it seemed!).
ACE magazine gave a bit of background story to the game, suggesting that teams from all over the Solar System compete in the Retro League. Each game pitting two heavily armed and heavily armoured teams of six players against each other in a no-holds-barred scrap. Continue reading
Chess Through The Ages is an unreleased chess game for Commodore Amiga 1200 and CD32 (possibly even PC – see further on). First kicked off in development around 1993 and eventually was set to be released in 1995 – it was never to be.
Heavily inspired by Battle Chess, the game was to feature decent animated chess pieces across a variety of different background styles. Some of the chess pieces look to have featured Star Wars characters too – including R2 D2 (not sure what licencing went on there). Continue reading
Once known as Borderline during its early development, Turbo Charge was inspired by the driving section that featured within Vendetta, an earlier game by System 3.
The game was released on the Commodore 64 in late 1991 to much acclaim, making up for the terrible conversion of Chase HQ from Ocean. You see, this was very much heavily inspired by Chase HQ, where you had to hunt down criminals across a number of stages. Continue reading
DISCLAIMER: We are a non-profit digitisation project, aiming to digitally preserve software and history which would otherwise be lost for good. If for any reason there is anything that you do not wish to be on the website, please contact us for removal.
