Unreleased & Cancelled Video Games across many platforms.
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. GTW has been preserving video game history since 1999.
Team 17’s great racing game for amiga was of course finished and released, though there were some early scenes from the game that didn’t quite make it into the final game. The following comes courtesy of GTW’s Grzegorz Antosiewicz.
One picture is from from Rikki magazine 1994 issue 5.
This shows three trucks on the racing track, probably as an additional obstacle to oil on asphalt. In the final game, there is one track with trucks that are close to the road, but on the left side and with a different design. Continue reading →
It hadn’t been long since the release of Speedball 2, when Team 17 decided to get in on the act. Whereas Speedball 2 was inspired by the classic 1975 film, Team 17 may have been about to do something more officially based on the film.
However, Commodore User magazine (who reported about the game in their news section) suggested that the title would be inspired by the C64 IJK game Rocket Ball (not Rollerball as they incorrectly specify). This game itself was also inspired by the Rollerball film. Continue reading →
Following on from January’s contribution from Jürgen Clausen, we have another CD that has been preserved with some 1994 PC demos before it was chucked in the bin.
Jürgen has kindly made backups and scans of a package called Greenwood Game Sampler, which we have uploaded onto archive.org.
How is it March already? Here is yet another GTW64 update for 2022 with a bunch of new entries, including 8 new entries to the archive, and a bunch of updates for 29 titles in all. Enjoy!
A neat sounding RPG that was being produced by Seven Stars for the PC and Commodore Amiga back in 1995. The game was highlighted to us thanks to LiqMatrix.
Early PC demo that has managed to sneak out
Seven Stars was based in Poland and had produced a number of games, including Kajko i Kokosz and Desert Wolf which were released the same year. Martwa Strefa (Dead Zone) had the following story within a news snippet in a Polish magazine:
“A prison escapee goes to a deserted bunker base and tries to unravel the mystery of the disappearance of all its staff. The task is so difficult that the base is under surveillance by aggressive combat robots ready to fight …” Continue reading →
Amberstar was a great RPG title released on the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST and PC back in 1992 by Thalion, and was to be part of a trilogy that was never to be. However, a sequel was created at least in the shape of Ambermoon, and released for the Commodore Amiga in 1993, but not two other platforms that we are about to explore.
Just as an aside, there was an unofficial third game in the form of Albion, which was being developed as a sequel to Ambermoon at Thalion, before it closed its doors and the work was transferred over to Blue Byte.
Though back to Ambermoon for our next entry, where there was planned to be not only an Amiga version, but PC DOS and Atari ST editions at one stage. Interestingly, in the December 1991 issue of Power Play magazine in Germany, they talk about the new Amberstar game due to be released that Christmas. Continue reading →
Our next VIC-20 entry is sadly one only announced in recent years as a new development. A conversion of System 3’s classic one-on-one fighter International Karate.
Started in 2017 by Eric Hilaire and announced on the Vic 20 Denial forums, the conversion would require an 1024KB Ultimem cartridge to be able to run and hold around 186 large software sprites and features.
The sprites were stored as data, with 4 copies of each of the sprites 2 pixels-shifted and with their corresponding masks. The sprite data would also take up 300kb unpacked.
Eric posted some screenshots of his progress, and also an early video – and it was looking pretty good overall.
It isn’t sure how the music would have been handled exactly, but we suspect there would have been a conversion of Rob Hubbard’s famous music. The graphics would be ported from the C64 and tidied up at a later date too. The video above shows a very early set of placeholder graphics.
Unfortunately, Eric decided to cancel the development in 2020 after losing motivation on the project, due mostly to comments about the choice of requiring Ultimem to run the game.
Eric was asked about releasing remains of the development, but doesn’t wish to do so. It is hoped that he may decide to return to the project some day.
Sometimes we need to be more mindful of what a privilege it is to still see new VIC 20 games being produced today, no matter the hardware requirements.
With thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni for flagging up.
Wing Star was the start of a new journey for developer Martin Piper, though he didn’t quite know it at the time. As you might well guess, the game was heavily inspired by the recent release of Star Fox (Star Wing in some places) on the Super Nintendo in 1992.
Owner of an Archimedes, Martin and his childhood friend Alan Peters, decided to see if they could make something similar on the platform and started to create a tech demo in late 1992. It wasn’t planned to be a full on clone of Star Fox, which of course would have resulted in all kinds of legal issues. Continue reading →
A few quick early screens that have been spotted by Martin Inter recently, in particular for the C64 conversions of Robocop, Predator and R-Type in Zzap Italia.
Predator and R-Type are quite small oddities, but for Robocop, in the Zzap Italia review was a factory level with a very different looking background with different colours and also doors not present in the final game:
With Predator, there are some early screens with slightly different graphics and no score panel at all: Continue reading →
Just a quick post to say thank you to the contributor today who passed on some information regarding some C64 titles. They didn’t leave a proper email/name for credit, so hence this post.
Most appreciated, and I’ll update the relevant pages + add new content sometime next week.
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.
Games That Weren't® is the registered trademark of Frank Gasking.
