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.

Latest News and Posts

Escape While You Can

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Not much to say about this game apart from its little resembelence to "Bear George", with its falling apples.

As you can tell, there is little information on this game which never got completed. All that remains currently is a small preview of level one, with some good cartoony graphics and cute little main character.

The game currently is nothing to write home about, which could be put down to its early stages. Just how much better a later version would be, is only known by the creator of this preview.

We recently had an email from the game’s developer who offers the information that there is a second level out there
which we may see sometime soon. In addition to this a whole load of sketches and plans for the game.

The developer may still wish to come back to this game one day and finish it off, so for now it sits in GTW, but in the future
could be taken out as a full version is released.

It’s early days, but we hope to hear more from the author about this title…

Another obscure title in the archives to maybe be finished…

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Evolution Cryser

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Thanks very much to Peter Weighill for highlighting this long lost game from Kingsoft.

Unfortunately we haven’t got anything to show apart from a screenshot scanned in for Gamebase. It depicts a game in similiar vein to Delta and possibly other SEU’s of that time. Just how the game played we’re not too sure.

There is a possibility that the game was written by someone who wrote previously for Kingsoft, but we’d have to do some major digging around to find out.

It would be nice to try and find this one and preserve it, even if it only got to a demo form. But what did actually happen to this game?… Was it completed?… was it any good?

Well, the game was actually released on the Amiga back in 1989 by Kingsoft, and the game was written by Gunter Kramer. Markus Schneider kindly got in touch and confirmed that he did the game, and it was also released.

Sure enough, thanks to contributor Lenny Bronstein, we learn that the game was reviewed by ASM magazine (October 1989). So it should be out there somewhere, but is currently missing.

Another obscure title in the archives to be solved…

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Evil King

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

A new GTW discovered by Jazzcat recently (plus fixed by Ian Coog), and passed onto GTW.

This is a very early preview by Vibrants, which seems to be a gory but cute Op-Wolf clone of somekind. It’s hard to tell because this preview is at such a early phase.

There is a brief story at the beginning of the game title screen as follows :

“Your girlfriend Cindy has been taken away by the evil king from the planet squarx, you have to get her back before he turns her to his queen with his dark power. You don’t have so much time. There is one problem!! The evil king got alot of murder-robots garding his castle, you have to kill them all before you are able to get through to Cindy and the Evil King!!”

This seems to be where the name ‘Evil King’ came from, though there is no sign of this name given for the actual game on the title screen. We assume though that ‘Evil King’ IS the name.

Really what we have here is all that remains of a game which sadly seems to have been scrapped very early on. Possibly the idea got stale, or even there were “life” things going on which prevented the game being completed.

The game after many years has now been sneaked out to the public to have a look at for the first time. Another concept which has failed. It is not playable, apart from a few seconds satistfaction of blasting some sprites to bits.. then its turn off and possibly wonder what could have been.

Music is by Thomas Mogensen, better known as Drax, and is a cover of Rob Hubbard’s Delta. Not sure if this has been released yet, though HVSC will hopefully confirm.

Its worth a look out of curiosity, but don’t expect loads of thrills here.

It could possibly be seen as a predecessor to ‘Blood’…

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Everwar

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Another game in the lost Psytronik game saga, sadly a result of poor support of their titles back in the C64’s dying days.

Everwar was another SEUCK title in development by Alf Yngve, and was inspired by Joe Haldeman’s novel THE FOREVER WAR. Sadly it never got further than making one still picture and an unfinished test level in the 1990s. The project was cancelled due to lack of time and inspiration, and Alf felt the C64 format just wasn’t up to something as ambitious as this.

We hope that Alf may still have something of the concept to preserve, but it is unlikely. It may be a case closed for this one!

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Euro Soccer

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Yet another football game which never quite made it, along with Thalamus’ Arsenal title.

This game was in development for Creative Edge back in 1992 for a short period. So short it seemed that no code was ever started.

The only work which was thought to have been done on the game was the converted soundtrack by Sean, and possibly some player graphics ported from the Amiga version by Jason Kelk. The Amiga version was completed by Creative Edge sometime before.

An outside developer was to write the code, but didn’t even get to start it according to Jason. David Wightman confirmed to GTW64 that he was doing the coding duties and that the game was actually up and running, with the pitch, units on the pitch moving around and of course Sean’s music playing.

Despite things shaping up well, the A.I was never moved onto the C64 version as the publisher, Flair Software, felt that the C64 market had come to an end – despite a strong market in Germany and Spain.

Could anything of the game be found? Time will tell – it seems that David kept all of his work, so there is a chance that the remains of this game could be found.

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Escape From Mars

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Now its getting hard… as the reviewing gets bog down, I keep coming across countless shooters, some real stinkers but some like this which look the business for the future, but get thrown away like the trash.

Escape From Mars has the basic elements present which make the game look a stunning sideways SEU, although the game lacks any real playability. Put that down to another early version, and a keen graphic artist! (Check that lovely ship!) :)

Music also makes good company for the nice graphics, so did a later version (Or even a final game we wish!) feature the playability aswell?…. Or was it all but a cover up? :)

The game it seems was reworked and actually released as Hidihood in 1993 by CP Verlag … http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=3531&d=18&h=0

So it is very much a case closed!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Attack On Centralis

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Tau Ceti was very well received, and received game of the year awards. Created by Pete Cooke on the Spectrum, John Twiddy was allocated the task of converting to the C64, which he did an
excellent job of.

Once complete, John really saw the potential in the game being extended, and tried to convince CRL to let him work on a new sequel called ‘Attack On Centralis’. John was convinced that he could use some techniques from Paul Woakes’ Encounter to speed up the game considerably and make something a lot better than the original.

CRL sadly turned down the idea, possibly because they knew that Pete was working on an official sequel and were waiting for that instead. It isn’t known how far John got with his sequel, or if he even started the game. No doubt that John probably had a
few test routines running which demonstrated what he could have done.

It would have been interesting to line this up against the official sequel which did well… but sadly we never saw the C64 version of that either. Check out the review to read more.

As with Academy, we need a lot of information on this title. Most of the information was taken from a conversation with Andrew Fisher and is a collaboration of information from various sources. Hopefully in the future we will be able to track down John
Twiddy and find out more.. though that is proving rather harder than we thought. Can anyone help us track down John and get us in touch?

More to come on this game we hope……

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Escape

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

A big thanks to Witold Bryndza who gave us the heads up about this long lost Timsoft which recently had an article published with a download link at C&A Fan. This was a game developed by a team called Artcore for Timsoft.

This is a neat little flick screen platformer with some colourful graphics which sees you having to find around 13 special squares across the map to progress further, whilst avoiding a series of enemies such as bats, snakes and giant snails.

It seems this was another Timsoft title that was caught up in the demise of the C64 and hence never got a full release until now. Its unsure why it has taken so long to surface, but we are glad it now has.

Overall it’s not the most spectacular game we have played, and it can get a little boring and samey to play, but it is rare to find an unreleased title in such a complete state, and this is a good example to digitally preserve and share with others.

Rafal Kwasny has been in touch and will hopefully be shedding some more light on their game (as well as other Artcore titles) very soon. He’s currently dusting down his disks and is starting to find bits and pieces. More here soon, but the level editors were already online, so we’ve added this to the archive.

Go check it out and watch this space for more details…

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Erik The Destroyer

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

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 “Erik the Destroyer” a C128 game which was described in adverts as follows:

“This game will actually feature an existing person from our staff. This guy is called Erik and he has got some real Rambo aspirations. The game will incorporate a platform style beat’em up with many deadly monsters and mutants. Available late October 1997.”

“Fight through a fantasy world in this platform style game…. From a little criminal, Erik turned into a mad man, intent on getting out of baddy land and into our own through a trans-dimensional port hole!”

Fabrizio Bartoloni found reference in Commodore Scene issue #23 from December 1998, page 8 – that products including Erik The Destroyer were being handed over to Gala Publishing. This would link David Connolly as a potential lead for trying to find something of the game.

This is all we currently know about the game, so its early days and we hope to find out more soon about this one!

More research needed!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 3 Comments

Eradicator 3

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Following on from the SEUCK based Eradicator 2 which was due for release by CDU, Jason G. Doig was working on a faster paced bi-directional vertical shooter, but moved on to Amiga stuff before it was finished sadly. None of the game was done in SEUCK and was far more advanced than the previous game done in the tool.

As the SEUCK effort was called "Eradicator 2", technically this is called "Eradicator 3", but Jason was planning to release the game as just "Eradicator"… starting from the beginning as his previous two games never saw the light of day in the first place. This makes it a little confusing, but ah well! :)

Jason’s problem (In his own words) was that he was more interested in the technical side of making games, and to some extent, playing with graphics. Gameplay was often slapped together without much thought at all.

The game only got as far as a single incompletable level. Just how well it looked and played we’re not sure yet, but we are hopeful that Jason will be able to find something of it so we can put it up along with Eradicator 2. Early days yet!

More soon we hope!…

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