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.
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
I wasn’t a huge comic book fan growing up, but I still liked to get the occasional copy of the Beano in the UK, where my favourite part was always Dennis the Menace. Probably because I was a kid who used to get up to all kinds of trouble around the same time.
It was news to me then that Alternative Software were planning to release a game based on the character and his dog Gnasher back in 1994, and it was thanks to @mcbpete and @yorecomputer for the heads up. Various magazines including The One, Amiga Power and Amiga Format would preview the game, showcasing a neat isometric style title. Continue reading
A short entry which is thanks to @nivrig and @ChinnyVision for posting on Twitter a few days ago.
Amstrad Computer User in June 1985 had posted a short news item regarding an Amstrad CPC conversion of the classic Nick Pelling game.
The game had only just recently been converted to the C64 and released by State Soft, which the article refers to and how it suffered from the lower res graphics utilized.
The magazine snippet suggested that the game was due out shortly with up to 256 levels. There would also be a new competition – the “Grand master Frak challenge”, with a first prize of an original Frak illustration, second prize of a cuddly Trogg and third being £25 of software. Continue reading
As the summer starts to draw to a close, we preserve an early Hungarian Tetris clone thanks to Csaba Virag. Then we take a look at what seems to be a long lost Commodore 64 conversion of a PET/VIC 20 title, two other Magic-series sets of titles that are at large, a long lost and promising game from Norway and a potential conversion of a late Mikro-Gen title. This along with 16 updates to existing entries, with a few findings and additional details added. Enjoy! Continue reading
Contributor Fabrizio Bartoloni flagged up an old WayBackMachine archive copy of this page which sadly no longer exists in its proper form when the website disappeared in 2009. Fabrizio suggested for us to host a copy of the page, as it features GTWs for early systems such as the Odyssey 2 and the unreleased Odyssey 3. The post is set to the authorship of Dieter Koenig as a result.
Special thanks to Bob Harris for this great game and for answering all of my questions! Thanks to Thomas Becker, who discovered some of the cheat codes “in those days”!
I really don’t know where to start, hmm, I think here: Well, on October 21, 1996 I received a letter from German Thomas Becker, in which he tells me about two cheat codes for the Philips G7000 game “Killer Bees”. One of these key combinations showed the initials of the programmer on the screen, the other allowed to play the game in slow motion, though without counting scores. Continue reading
A quick post from us, thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni. Fabrizio has recently located a couple of unreleased DOS games online on the classicdosgames.com website and has shared some links if you want to check them out:
With thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni!
Mega Twins (known as Chiki Chiki Boys in Japan) was a sickly cute platformer produced by Capcom in the early 90’s, a slight sideways turn from the likes of Strider, Final Fight and Ghouls n Ghosts, no doubt to tap into the younger players and their 10 pence pieces. Many of us probably would have vomited at the sight of it and went back to kicking several barrels of crap out of bad guys in Final Fight.
The game consisted of you controlling two twins who carry swords and had to cross various platform levels to kill the dragon which killed their Father and find the Dragon Blue Eyes stone and save their world. The game was predominantly a sideways scrolling platformer, but with some vertical scrolling portions and a later castle level, where you would climb vertically to mix things up a bit. Large guardians would feature throughout as well to provide a fair challenge to even the most hardened of gamers. 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.
