Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
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.
A bit of a surprise spotting in the preview section of Zzap!64 issue 52 in 1989. It seems that the Last Crusade action game was to feature multi-coloured based graphics instead of the hi-res ones we all know.
What we initially guessed was that the developers found it hard to get the lighting effect working on the first level with multi-colour graphics, so switched things to hi-res. Or overall that it was felt the low res graphics were just not working and were re-done from scratch.
However, in the comments on the game on Lemon 64’s entry, Mark Tait in 2003 says that he was originally working on the game and had to hand it over due to having to commit to music developments.
Could it be therefore that this version was Mark’s original version, and the released game was a version started from scratch? More soon we hope from Mark on this!
Would be very interesting to find this earlier version of the game, complete with a more colourful status panel. It might be very difficult to find nowadays now.
What is interesting is that Zzap Italia reviewed the game, showing the colour screenshots (see scans below). Surely they must have been provided preview screenshots from Newsfield by accident to use?
If you know anything more about this earlier version, then please get in touch!
A strangely named game which was to be a graphical text adventure.
The game was actually meant for Protovision, but Protovision were not interested, so the game was cancelled. Richard Bayliss was to pick up the game and do something, but lost interest it seems and the game was fully cancelled.
A series of graphical screens in the end were all that were created. Richard Bayliss compiled these into a slideshow and released it for people to have a look at.
The graphics are not spectacular, but this was a text adventure and nothing more really.
Not much to say at the moment unless the developers want to say more. Checkout the slideshow to see a small glimpse of this game, or at least the graphics.
Imperium was a game by Jörg Schließer which was mean’t to be published by the Tronic Verlag, and like Captain Stark has not been seen anywhere.
This game was told to be a SF-RPG, described as unique on the German RPG market. It received very high ratings.
The aim was to guide a party of 4 characters through a mission, which was divided into three levels. The screen arrangement was as in Ultima. There were lots of sounds and little graphics and lots of features mentioned.
A shame that a finished RPG doesn’t seem to have made it, and the reasons are so unclear to why Tronic Verlag let this game go.
Or did they actually release it?…. A full game is here to download, but can anyone claim to own an original?
Well, contributor LDX#40 confirms that they bought the game back in the day from German magazine ASM. The game came in a plain white box with just an ASM sticker on it (as you can see in the scans – same label as the disk). LDX#40 has very kindly made scans of the disk and manual, which you can now find below.
Crystal Software and Electronics were an ambitious software house trying to save the C64 gaming market back in 1997 with a large range of planned releases. Sadly it wasn’t to be, and as with other companies – it was found not to be a financially viable proposition to try and make money out of the C64.
Out of the newly planned titles was “Imperial Bodygard” a C64 game which was described in adverts as follows:
“This game places you in the hide of a bodyguard to a VIP. Act accordingly and save this man/woman’s life by shooting perpetrators and fighting off molesting fans. If the project is continued it will be avialable early February 1998.”
“In this game you get to install protection equipment, decide and execute tactics to protect your clients. If anything happens to any of your clients, it is you who get the blame…”
This is all we currently know about the game, so its early days and we hope to find out more soon about this one!
A severe lack of goings on here i’m afraid, with this simplistic shooter.
The game features some Haydn Dalton sprites ripped because the main ship looks so out of place compared with the other classy sprites. Infact, the game borrows sprites from Subsonic :)
There is no backgrounds, but just a series of attack waves and ability to shoot.
The game can therefore be put down as being in its early stages. The actual final stage of this game is unknown, though hopefully some more credit finding and searching for the creators of this game will help establish the final version of this game and some more information.
A main ship with a series of sprites, and thats it just now…
Illusions was to be a Intellivision game conversion to the C64 by the Mattel Electronics France offices. It was scheduled, but apparently never worked on, though it was given an id of #7857 on diskette.
The catalogue entry for the original Intellivision game (Which also never got released) described the game as follows:
“The enchanted mirror splits you into multiple images. You must become whole before time runs out. Changing stairways and folding cubes with SuperGraphics try to keep you from safety.”
Essentially from a batch of prototype games from the French development offices, Illusions was picked as a winner and given the green light for development.
The game had a working title originally of Escher, mainly due to the multiple game screens being inspired by the mad designs by Dutch lithographer M.C. Escher. Only the Colecovision version was complete after Coleco brought the rights and released it.
According to the Intellivision website, little or no work was done on the C64 version of the game. But then one of our contributors (see comments) found it tucked away on Gamebase 64.
Thanks to JazzGhostrider, we can confirm that unfortunately the C64 game seems to be incomplete, every second level should feature a cube-landscape, but on this C64 version it is just an endless series of the same level.
Is there anything more to find, or was this the final version that leaked out?
A nice little Quix/Volfield clone, with some nice visuals and addictive gameplay, as with the original.
It has recently been found that the game was infact completed and released on 64’er, a German disk magazine. Eventually this game will be removed from the archive.
International Karate Deluxe was well on the way from multiplex and sprite master Archer Maclean back in the day. The third instalment in the series had a 2-3 screen background to provide more space for the area of combat. Also even more computer-players could be on the screen than IK+
The game also would allow you to collect up fighting moves, and define which ones you would use for any section of the game. You would be able to reassign moves as well on the joystick and create your own mappings.
This was meant as a revamp of the classic beat-em-up. Since the excitement of the C64GS around it’s release stages, many companies dreamed up games with techniques never thought that would work on tape or disk, and that would be perfect for Cart. IK Deluxe was one of them, and the enhancements must have been something to be worthy of a cart release, seeing that IK+ was a single load anyway.
After the flop of the GS, many of the planned games were stopped and only a few carried on producing carts. System 3 wasn’t one of them unfortunately, and only got a few of their games on cartridge.
Well, the game was infact started back in 1987/88 and was for the ST and Amiga platforms. For reasons not yet known, the game was not complete – though Archer believes he still has something of it somewhere. Retro Gamer printed a moves list as well!
So what of the C64GS edition? Well, Archer suggests that nothing was started on a C64GS edition (as seen in the Retro Gamer interview) – meaning that the press must have got hold of merely a rumor and nothing more. Maybe System 3 were being hopeful too?
As a result, unless someone else was doing a conversion themselves – this was nothing more than vapourware sadly!
After all the nice looking visuals, you are greeted with a poor 2 player game to do with words.
Not interesting, and a waste of nice visuals. Probably intended as a freebie for a magazine cover or something, the interest level will only last a few seconds before you reset your C64.
A later version would have to dramatically pull away from this preview to save it, thats if the game ever made it futher.
Hopefully contact with the programmers will establish what was going on…
An interesting entry which is worth reporting on. Ice Tea was a great little Ice hockey game released back in the late 90’s and was actually released!
So why do we have a GTW entry on it?… Well, thanks to Martin/Stadium 64 – take a look at the shots page and compare this preview to the final released game. It’s only cosmetic, but things were looking quite different.
Technically this is the very same game, but the later released version improved on things somewhat with its graphics. For posterity, and because of just how different the game looked… we’ve stuck it into the archives.
And the good thing?… There is nothing to search for, so its an open and shut case. Check out the full game at http://www.gamebase64.com
A big thanks to Martin/Stadium 64 (http://s64.emuunlim.com/) for highlighting the differences, and also for the screenshots which we have used. Thanks to Gamebase 64 too for the actual released game shots..
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