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.
One more Channel 8 Software ‘Game That Wasn’t’ for the collection, I, Spy for Children was part of a slew of planned released by Channel 8 Software, several of which never saw the light of day.
Judging from the name it seems I, Spy for Children would have been designed to help children learn a vocabulary, probably linking it to pictures too.
As for why it went unreleased, we have no idea. Hopefully someone connected to the company can come forward and give us more information.
Game confirmed as finished and released … http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=7279&d=18&h=0
Case closed!
Another game in the same week released by Hermit Software, and just as with their Mortal Kombat 2 conversion, they stun again with Island of monsters.
The game was started by Hungarian crew Hermit Software back in 1998, and unfortunately was never to be finished. However, a good chunk of the game is infact playable where you can fight in a Barbarian 2 style game with awesomely detailed graphics throughout. The main characters in the game especially are very well defined.
In addition to the playable parts, there is a really nice animated introduction sequence which overall gives this preview some real polish compared to some unreleased titles we have in the GTW vaults.
We’re not entirely sure why the game was cancelled, but we are convinced it was done as a labour of love for the machine. There is rumour that the developer sold his C64, and only recently got one back in around 2001, where he was able to dig out some of his unreleased works.
This is a fantastic preview which will impress you very much and is certainly well worth seeing! We hope to learn more about it soon!…
A fantastic preview of a fantastic looking game…
Iron Maiden is another game which was originally planned by EBES when the C64 was dying out commercially around 1994 time. The game was mentioned in a note file from around 1995 where Russ talks about various games which EBES planned to do if people would support them.
At present we are not quite sure what the game would have been about, obviously it would have had the guys from Iron Maiden in it – but we’re not sure what type of actual game it would have been. Most likely it would have been a platforming game, but then it could have been a management sim. We need more details from Russ Michaels to see what this game was really about.
It is very likely that the game never actually got started, so we may well be looking at vapourware – but it will be worth finding out to close the case on this one. There would have likely been legal issues too using the band’s name.
Do you know any more?
A limited Uridium clone which eventually made it onto the Amstrad platform, along with the Atari ST and Amiga versions. This game was brought to my attention by Martin Holland, who worked on the Amstrad, ST and Amiga versions, but not the C64 version. Credits for the C64 version were unknown until Paul Clansey got in touch with GTW64 in 2012 and confirmed he was behind the game.
Paul had the following to say about the game:
“I coded the C64 version but can’t remember who did the design, graphics or music (they were hectic times and I worked with many people around that then).
I wasn’t aware that it ever got released, and hoped it wasn’t, because… from what I recollect of what the Canvas directors Ian and Gary told me (now both sadly deceased), they’d rushed the masters (for all platforms) by car to the duplicators, on the promise of a payment from a once well-known Manchester-based software label.
The payment was vital to keep Canvas going and pay employee wages. The directors returned with a 12 month driving ban for one (130+ mph on the M6) and a cheque that the software label subsequently cancelled. End of Canvas and loss of wages for employees. Incidental trivia on the game- the high score table defaults to characters from Zappa songs.”
The company was actually from Birmingham, and it was U.S. Gold, after Paul later found a confirmation letter from U.S. Gold asking him to add a high score in 1989, some 6 months after Canvas had gone under.
The game contains music by Peter Clarke, who also composed the music to Bubble Bobble and Head Over Heals. The game itself isn’t too hot, and is a poor man’s Uridium clone at this stage.
It seems that US Gold canned the game after not being happy with it. It may have not quite been finished due to rushing off with the masters, so this may well be it for the game.
However, according to Keltic Danor, this game was in fact released on a budget label called Tornado. Was this true, and does anyone have a scan? Was Tornado a US Gold based budget label that eventually released it? The Amiga version was actually released it seems: http://hol.abime.net/5000
But there is currently no evidence of an original out there – so was the Amiga version leaked too?
In June 2020, contributor Nicola Ferrarese got in touch after purchasing what was the unused Iron Hand artwork created by artist Alan Craddock. Alan has very kindly allowed us to upload the artwork scan he made to this page, so here is a glimpse of how the cover would have looked!
Originally we thought the other vehicles were not present in the game, but they are there – and you can select the vehicles to do different missions, as Paul explains:
“Choppers had the key role of rescuing/recovering crew of other (recon, missile suppression, air cover) missions, who were downed behind enemy lines. The game required the player to fly various mission types, using appropriate aircraft types- and it’s all based on the actual air operation called “Iron Hand” in the Vietnam war.”
Found hiding on a bunch of old Compunet disks by Viktor Vargor came this interesting little preview of a Submarine game by none other than Mike (Kernal) Berry, who later went on to create Boing!, Reckless Rufus and the other GTW, Savage Platforms.
How did we know it was by Mike?… Well, hazarded a guess and apart from the fact that the disk image had Mike’s name, it was also full of all his demos and nothing else. Oh, and Mike himself confirmed that this was his game :-)
The game simply consists of a 2/3 sprite yellow submarine on a single screen with a bit of scenary. I imagine that the game would have later scrolled and been similiar to Airworf, but underwater.
This preview is lacking on playability, and the main ship is the only thing that is interactive. The coloured blocks present are there for testing the collision detection, which it seems Mike must have been trying to tweak at the time.
When asked about the game, Mike gave said
"Iron Fish wasn’t really marketed for anyone really. I knocked it up during a day of particular boredom.
I had fancy ideas about creating fancy water effects and giant mechanical fish (a little like the one in Stingray!). I think I probably only spent about 2-3 days on it maximum, then life go in the way :)"
So that was it, the game never progressed any further and never got offered to any companies. Surely it would have done had the game been finished. This was merely a project which Mike started and lost interest in, as do many programmers with various projects.
The game essentially is a lost relic of Mike’s programming past, and is a small indication of some of the early thoughts that Mike had during his C64 coding time. A shame it never got complete, but there you go :)
All that remains is a main sprite and test gfx… Case closed…
A very popular and ground breaking game on the Spectrum, was in fact also planned for the Commodore 64 back in 1987.
Sandy White, creator of Ant Attack and Zombie Zombie, set to work on creating one of the most ground breaking 8-bit games of all time, up in the ranks of The Sentinel.
The ZX Spectrum version was completed and released, but the C64 conversion never surfaced or was never heard of. It seems the Amstrad CPC version also befell a similar fate. There was a mention in German Happy Computer magazine (issue 02/1986) with the C64 format listed, possibly taken from the adverts at the time.
Checking the advert (which you can see on the scans tab below), I Of The Mask was indeed intended for release on the Commodore 64, though all screenshots are that of the Spectrum version. It is very likely that any conversion was too slow.
Sandy White was asked about the C64 conversion, but no response was given, though rumours that it was Sandy White coding the conversion are confirmed to be false, with him only coding on the ZX Spectrum.
This confirmation came finally in 2009 when Richard Hewison got confirmation that there was indeed a C64 conversion underway by Paul Fik, who also converted Sandy White’s Ant Attack to the C64.
Attempts were made to try and locate Paul, but we’ve had no joy as of yet. We did find a Paul Fik from Plymouth, but who had passed away back in 2004, and we feel might be the same person unfortunately. Hopefully we are wrong and we can track down Paul some day.
In-Zane is a neat little preview, which is in a very early stage, but already shows some promise. It is a kind of Sonic/Mario game, scrolling in one direction where you control a robotic guy on tracks.
You can jump and spin in Sonic fashion and kill a limited set
of enemies over a early set of background graphics. This occurs for a short while, until you literally hit a brick wall, and have to start again. It’s quick, but already this shows a game which might have been quite nice to play had it been completed.
There could well be more, though we need to find out. We at least have some developer names so we can try and find out more about what happened to it. It was being developed for Everlasting Style, which I think were based in Australia?…
Graphics are good and functional, though they may have been improved in the final game, music is very good by D Bakewell.
Overall, a nice preview to check out for the time being…
Due to come out on the C64 in 1989, International Soccer Challenge was one of several games due for release by Microstyle in the 1989/90. ISC was also released on the Amiga, Atari ST and PC platforms, but the C64 version never came out – why?
The game itself seems rather odd in presentation; the viewing screen of the game is a giant stadium screen, with information dotted around it on smaller screens. While an innovative attempt to stand out from the rest of the genre, it does seem to unnecessarily limit the screen space dedicated to actual game play.
Microstyle, the company publishing the game, were the UK home of software giant Microprose, who also had an American equivalent of Microstyle, called Microplay, though I cannot find out if this label actually released anything. I have to admit to finding this a bit confusing simply because the title of the game, with the word ‘soccer’ instead of the UK and European term, ‘football’, would suggest an American company – perhaps Microprose chose the title or the name was designed to appeal more to an American market, which is where the largest market for the C64 was, after all.
Alternatively it may be simply that the game didn’t receive particularly great reviews on the other systems, and with the market leaving the 8-bit scene behind they decided to pull the plug on the C64 version. Although we have an advert with reference to a C64 version, others have no mention of the Commodore 64 so it seems the game was possibly pulled even before the release of the 16-bit versions. This could suggest they ran into difficulties with a C64 port, and decided to scrap it altogether.
Of course, all this is conjecture, there’s no real way of knowing what happened to the C64 version of International Soccer Challenge, or how fully the game was developed, unless we track down and speak to someone who worked on the game itself or with Microstyle at the time. Of the four games Microstyle did release on the C64, it seems the team working on each game was completely different, so it seems unlikely that someone who worked on one of the games, such as Rick Dangerous 2, necessarily worked on ISC. For now it’s a dead end, but we can remain hopeful that something of the game exists, it has been spotted on a list of cart games in Commodore Format again suggesting they were confident it could be made and released, its just up to us to find it – now that’s a challenge!
Did it ever get started?…
Rugby sims have always been underrepresented in the computer gaming market. Football sims have dominated Europe, while in the USA its American Football that has dominated. It doesn’t help that the rules of rugby are awkward to translate fluently to a computer whilst retaining the fast pace of the game.
Its even worse for the C64, a search of the GB64 database reveals a mere four results under ‘rugby’ out of over 18,000 entries, one of which is a management game. Compare this to World of Spectrum where from over 6,000 games around ten or so appear.
As such the possible appearance of another Rugby sim becomes quite important. The C64 has an abundance of platform games, action games and so on, but if a new Rugby game were discovered, it would increase the genre by over 20% (Nice use of statistics, eh?).
In International Rugby, a game I spent many hours playing on the Spectrum, the aim is to win the Grand Slam playing as one of the ‘Five Nations’, that is England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales or France. A major benefit is the two-player option, which I played with my brother on for many hours. Admittedly one of the easiest ways to score a try (which is the equivalent of a ‘goal’ for you soccer-heads or ‘touchdown’ for any American Football fans!) is simply to run with the ball and dodge your opponents, but it still provided hours of fun and taking kicks was always a good test of skill.
The only evidence we have for a C64 version of International Rugby, which was released on the Spectrum and later on the C64, is an advert, for the Spectrum version, that states that the C64 and Amstrad version were ‘soon to be released’. The Amstrad CPC version saw the light of day, but the Commodore version didn’t.
The main question is why did the C64 version not get released? Possibly it was due to the market the computers held. The Spectrum dominated in Europe (with Amstrad lagging behind it) while the C64 held dominance in the USA, where rugby is even less popular than football (or ‘Soccer’ as our American audience will know it!). Maybe Artic, the company behind International Rugby, felt there wasn’t enough demand for a rugby game on the C64 and shelved the game. However, if that is the case, why develop it in the first place?
According to Lemon64, the first C64 Rugby game appeared in 1988, three years after International Rugby would have been released. Certainly there would have been little or no competition from similar games then, in fact, as possibly the only rugby game on the market it would have dominance for at least three years until Codemasters’ own rugby game came onto the market.
Interestingly the rights to the Spectrum version ended up with Blue Ribbon, who re-released the Spectrum game in 1987. What has this got to do with the C64 version you ask? Well, looking at their release list on the Spectrum, they went from being prolific in 1985 to barely releasing anything in 1986 and nothing in 1987. They released far more games on the Spectrum than the C64, where their only 1986 releases were text adventures. They folded, probably in 1986 after which Blue Ribbon bought the rights to International Rugby (although bizarrely a game called World Champion Icehockey was released on the C64 in 1991 by an ‘Artic Computing Ltd.’ – was it the same company trying to make a comeback?). Is it possible that by the time International Rugby was released, they were focusing more on the larger Spectrum market in an attempt to stave off bankruptcy, and as such pulled the release of the game at the last minute?
Ultimately the game never saw the light of day, though the release of the CPC version makes me believe that the C64 version was made, but was pulled for some reason and hasn’t been heard of since. This is a real shame, as the discovery of a new rugby game would genuinely give the C64 scene something extra, as opposed to another clichéd platform game no-one really needs.
Will we ever see this long lost game?…
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