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.
If you haven’t seen Polar Bear in Space already, then you are missing out on a wonderful shooter/platformer which has elements of Wizball, Retrograde and even Dropzone with the explosion of the main protagonist.
At the time of writing, a new Black Edition of the game is immiment, which features new music by Jon Wells and a specially produced loading screen by Robin Levy. Silvan has also written a brilliant book that details how the game was all put together, which we recommend you keeping an eye out for. Continue reading →
Our second Games That Weren’t Christmas update day is for Atari 8-bit fans, with a hugely important discovery and set of findings from the disks of the late Archer Maclean, which GTW has been meticulously preserving thanks to Chris Wilkins (Fusion Retro Books), who has been overseeing and ensuring his work is preserved.
We all know that Dropzone was heavily inspired by Archer’s love of Defender and Stargate in the arcades, though for the first time today, we reveal that before Dropzone – Archer had almost done official conversions of both Defender and Stargate for Atari.
Check out our two new entries which give the full story of what happened, as well as crucially something for you to see and play.
In addition to this, we have also produced a special YouTube video to talk through the findings and the build up of what eventually led Archer to creating Dropzone.
With huge thanks to Chris Wilkins (Fusion Retro Books) for the loan of Archer’s disks to preserve and permission to add executables to the site, Alan Hammerton for hardware help, Mat Allen for the flippy PC drive loan, Ashley Hogg for assistance in looking at one of the prototypes and Bertrand / Atari Frog for guidance and help with tools and formats.
In memory of Archer Maclean – 28 January 1962 – 17 December 2022.
If you haven’t already, before reading this page – we recommend checking out our page on Defender first. This is the title that would evolve from that development, in which was Archer’s second attempt at trying to get work with Atari.
Archer had previously created an attempt at a Defender conversion, which had impressed all who had seen it at the P.C.W 1982 exhibition. It had clearly spooked Atari too, who asked Archer to cease development, as they already had a cartridge version in the works in the US (that eventually saw release).
After completing his final year of his degree around May 1983, Archer had then discovered the new sequel to Defender, called Stargate. It prompted Archer to dust down the code he had produced for Defender and considerably improve it and tidy up into a more Stargate form. He also added an impressive logo with a colour fade effect to add extra polish. Continue reading →
Dropzone is one of the most memorable games on the Atari platform of all time, created by the genius that is the late Archer Maclean, who sadly passed away in late 2022. With the game, Archer created an impressively smooth title that was heavily inspired by both Defender and Stargate.
In August 2023, Chris Wilkins (Fusion Retro Books) entrusted Games That Weren’t with the task of preserving all of Archer’s development disks. Whilst doing so, a series of significant discoveries were made which tells a story about how we ended up with the amazing Dropzone, which started with a conversion of the very game that inspired it – Defender.
A bit of a surprise now for Amiga fans as part of our 3-day Christmas 2023 update on Games That Weren’t – starting off with a Codemasters title which hasn’t been known about until today, and missing for 30 years.
Back during the early 1990s, Genesis Software (consisting of Jonathan Temples, Dave Clarke and Ashley Hogg) had created the superb CJ’s Elephant Antics for Codemasters, rising from the ashes of an abandoned New Zealand Story conversion for Ocean Software.
Penguin Tower on the Commodore 64 was recently finished off after almost 30 years. Developer Jani Hirvo has just informed Games That Weren’t that he has released all of the source code for the game on github!
One that we missed this year, but Jan / TCD found this unreleased German graphic text adventure whilst working on Hall of Light and which was uploaded for all to see.
We’re not 100% sure of the background to the title, apart from knowing that the game was developed and designed by Gregor Widuch, with graphics by Sonja Heil. Neither seem to have worked on any other games that are in the archives. Continue reading →
Our friends at Atarimania.com have informed us of the recovery of an unreleased text adventure for the Atari 400/800 called The Ronin which has been missing for 39 years. A game that was intended for release eventually by Brøderbund Software, who had acquired Synapse Software at the time.
The game was found on a disk belonging to Bill Darrah (former Synapse Software programmer). It is thanks to the efforts of John Hardie of the National Videogame Museum who dumped the game, and for author David Alzofon for allowing the game to be made available.
Way back in 2000, Games That Weren’t had got in touch with Jani Hirvo regarding his lost Commodore 64 game – Penguin Tower. But did you know there was also a PC version?
You see – the game was reviewed in Commodore Format, scoring a decent percentage and was due for release by Visualize Software in the UK. Sadly, it never happened – but after almost 30 years, it finally got finished off and released.
At the time – Jani told GTW that the game was almost finished at the time and there wasn’t much to do, suggesting one day he could finish it. However, Jani was also working on a PC edition of the game which he was focusing on instead of the C64 game and provided us with a 10 level preview. Continue reading →
A huge thank you to Allan Pinkerton, who has preserved several educational titles from Micro Labs and Cymbal Software for the Commodore 64.
As they are not unreleased game entries, we have just made this post to make them available to all, and hopefully over time they will get integrated into various other digital archives, including Gamebase64.
Here are the links below and a huge thanks once more to Allan for all his hard work!
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.
