Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
Welcome to Games That Weren't!
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.
The quality of the game certainly seems to be at a level of one that would have been pitched around the various software houses at the time, and wasn’t a SEUCK game by any standards. Flik Flak was a good solid puzzler overall.
We tried to get hold of Mark Neesam to find out more and see if we could confirm about the game, but unfortunately we had no luck as of yet – though its believed that Mark went on to produce some massive games such as “Fusion Frenzy”…
Flashpoint was another production of the highly successful Denton Designs for Ocean Software.
This was to be a puzzler based game with the screen split into two segments and controlling some kind of pyramid structure. It wasn’t a bad game, but it wasn’t particularly great either it seems.
The game was advertised very briefly in Commodore Computing International, and briefly in other magazines with small mentions. Flashpoint was pretty much completed according to rumours at the time.
Stuart Fotheringham shed some light on the title, and indicated that after Ocean turned down Starrace, Flashpoint got pulled shortly afterwards. This may have been due to the game being a bit too crap for Ocean’s liking. To prove the rumours to how complete the game was, the game eventually got released in some way on the Spectrum through a “Your Sinclair” covertape and can be found on the World of Spectrum website.
Sadly the C64 version never surfaced in a similiar way, which leads us to believe that it wasn’t quite as complete as the Spectrum version. It was however completed!
Artist Paul McCarthy confirms that he did the loading screen and in-game graphics for the game, which had a more futuristic Tron-esque graphical look. The code was done by none other than Mike Hutchinson, who is famous for Double Dragon 2 and Final Fight.
The problem was that Flashpoint was considered too cerebral and hard to master by the publishers and never released. Sadly Mike no longer has anything C64 related, so this could well be lost forever.
The source of this next entry is interesting as it was mentioned in "Illegal" pirate fanzine as something seen at PC 1988 show (or so it seems) by SSD of Cosmos.
We don’t know much about this game at present, and there doesn’t seem to be any acknowledgement of the game on the web.
Following on from Lost Robot 2 is another preview of a game which seems to have not quite made it. Markt & Technik are believed to have been the people who would have published the game, as the name is mentioned in the preview.
What we have here is a truely awesome demonstration/preview of a game where you control a bird or a fly across a Shadow of the Beast style 13 layer parallax landscape. The effect is far greater than Ocean’s Shadow of The Beast, and also includes some impressive colour mixing.
There is not really any gameplay to be found here, but you can move the bird or fly around on the screen (With the ability to switch between players like in Donkey Kong Country). We’re not sure what the aim of the game would have been.
The game was coded in assembly using the Action Reply Monitor, and was ditched. Sven confirmed to GTW64 in 2013 that the game only got this far and was abandoned as he decided to move onto other platforms.
We all may remember the sequel to Fire and Forget coming onto our C64 screens in the early 90’s, but the eagled eyed people out there will have realised that like with the likes of James Pond, only the sequel ever actually got a release.
The first game in the Fire and Forget series was sadly never to be seen on the C64.
C&VG in august 1988 had an advert by Titus which stated that the game was coming soon on all 8-bit home computers, including the C64. A review of the Amiga/ST version stated that the 8-bit versions won’t be appearing for a month or two, but will play very similar to the other versions on the 16-bits. This would remain to be seen I guess.
The Amstrad and Spectrum versions did manage to get out, but sadly the C64 never did surface for reasons currently unknown. You could say that the 16-bit versions flopped, but they didn’t and a sequel did make it instead. Very strange.
This will be an interesting title to try and dig up some information on. Fabrizio Bartoloni made the suggestion that the developer could be Jean-Charles Meyrignac, who did the early Crazy Cars games at the time for Titus. Perhaps he was to re-use the same engine to make the original Fire and Forget?
If it’s not puzzlers, its sideway SEU’s… this time another one from 1989.
Fine Tin is currently not so fine yet, with little to do in this early preview. Apart from some scrolling brown turd like mountains and a few little turd like ships, there isn’t much else to say currently apart from "Rob Hubbard style music".
Just how early this preview is in the game’s development is anyone’s guess. Its not known if the game ever progressed any further than this.
Anyone got any credits for this obscure little game?
Another unfinished puzzler with some graphics ripped from Hammerfist.
I’m not quite sure what is going on here, but as the title seems to suggest, its possibly where you have to find parts of the picture and reconstruct it.
Most of the game’s engine seems complete, so we can assume that this preview is of a later stage of the game’s process.
The only thing currently lacking is a front end, and other titles. Possibly these were added, but a finished version never surfaced.
Thanks to Mariusz Mlynski, we learn that the coder was Marc Pampusch – whose name was tucked away in the code.
Final Frontier was part of the Wargamers series by PSS and was advertised in their catalogues, but the C64 version has never surfaced by the looks of things and no other version seems to have either.
The game was rumoured to be your typical RPG and pretty much followed the same routine as previous PSS games.
We’d like to try and find the C64 version, even if it was released and get it preserved. However, we have no current leads so this will be a tough challenge.
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.
