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 since 1999.
Please Browse our archive and discover the many entries that we host for many different platforms.
Dwagons is a game which is not too dissimilar in style to the classic Pengo, with the concept of being able to push blocks. The blocks come in various different forms, which provide tricks and traps throughout. Joystick magazine described the game as a title that combines arcade, strategy and adventure. The graphics early on looked pretty good, showcasing a 2.5D view, and blocks could stack up too, with the characters being able to jump up onto them and give an extra level of depth to the game. The two main characters if you hadn’t guessed already, are dragons – or Dwagons, as the title suggests, going by the name of Snort and Snail. Continue reading →
Platform: Commodore Amiga (+ potentially others later on)
Also known as: Monkey Business
It was recently that team member Grzegorz Antosiewicz highlighted an abandoned Amiga game which had completely passed me by last year when artist Glenn Broadway created a detailed blog post back in May 2022. The majority of information and all images have been gleaned from Glenn’s excellent post to create the entry within our archives with his permission.
Funky Monkey was the first game Glenn had worked on, which started after being invited to help with graphics for the title already in development. A friend was on a YTS placement at Images Software at the time, and this resulted in an introduction to Karl Jeffrey (the founder) and a subsequent invite.
Early image from Monkey Business, which eventually would see an overhaul on its design.
At the time in early 1991, the game was being developed under the name of Monkey Business. This was already under way by a development team called DC Software, which was none other than developer Daniel Clapson. Continue reading →
As well as titles you may well remember, we try to also cover titles which may have passed you by. Often due to how late they were to the scene or how little was actually produced. Our next title seems to have disappeared as quickly as it first appeared, in Polish magazine, Amiga Magazyn, back in the summer of 1995.
The game was called Day of Wrath (or Dies Irae, as listed in the magazine), and was being developed by the Finnish demo group Damage (developed by the Polish contingent of the group). A small news article referred to the game as a Polish Stardust clone, and looking at the screenshots, you can see why.
Day of Wrath utilized ray-tracing techniques to give an impressive visual quality. It isn’t quite clear if the screenshot shown was merely a mock up, though the piece talks of a large number of smoothly animated objects and scenery to give speed to the game. Perhaps though this was just plans of how it was going to be, rather than how it was running. Continue reading →
A shorter month, so our monthly update to the GTW64 archives has come round fast. This month we have 1 new entry and a total of 20 entries updated overall. Thanks to our contributors for their help and enjoy!
Richard Bayliss has been working hard the past few months to finish off an abandoned Columns clone which was infamously released into PD and onto Commodore Format’s covertape in an incomplete form around 30 years ago.
This has now been fully completed and you can download a playable version of the game, with proper scoring and with the ability for the game to end.
A very short entry until we can learn more, but Access Denied was a 3D game apparently programmed by the same people who did F-19 Stealth Fighter.
If that is the case, then we could be looking at the developers being:Adrian Scotney, Malcolm Hellon and/or Tim Walter
Apparently the game had been in development for around two years, and where there were two artificial intelligence’s controlling a world. You have to choose which to serve to restore peace to the world (described as being like Mercenary a little). The 3D landscapes in the game would feature lots of polygon objects to fly around, and lots of oversampled speech which was reportedly of CD quality. Continue reading →
A very short entry until we can learn more, but this was to be yet another Ocean Software title that was due for release around 1992/1993 time for at least the Commodore Amiga.
The game was reported in a brief news snippet by Amiga Power magazine, but with no other details given about the title and what it entailed.
We hope to learn more soon about the game and will continue to update this entry as we do. In the meantime, if you know anything more about the title – please get in touch. Continue reading →
Miracle Games Team were ambitiously trying to do a number of developments at one stage for the Commodore Amiga, which also included a revival of Dick Special.
Sadly many titles mentioned would never see the light of day, and Bouncy Bat game (later known as Miracle Bat) was one such title. The title itself was just a working title, and was described as being a tribute to Mario and Sonic The Hedgehog.
As you may have guessed, the main protagonist was a bat that could bounce around a large multi-directional scrolling map.
When previewed by various magazines including Amiga Power and Joystick, the game was at a very early stage of development – with coding by Delvin Sorrell (now Patricia Curtis). It isn’t certain who was behind most of the graphical work, but likely to have been Gordon Leggatt. Continue reading →
Our next entry is for a title which may well have been released, but in very low numbers, due to being quite late into the Amiga 1200’s life and an educational title (further limiting its potential audience).
Bertie’s Animal Kingdom was reviewed in a few places, including Amiga Format’s very last issue in 2000. The game consisted of a number of simple animal recognition games, and was released on both CD and Disk. The CD edition would contain a number of extra games and scenarios.
Unfortunately, it scored rather average marks, which may well have put off any potential users within an already shrinking market. For years, the game has been listed as Missing in Action on the Hall of Light, though there are instructions for the CD edition online, as well as screenshots of the inlay. We believe therefore that the game was released, but in very limited numbers – hence the lack of preservation.
However, with a huge thanks to contributor Ivan S, GTW was put in touch with musician Darryl Sloan who still had a copy of the game on two disks. The CD version sadly was not in his possession. Darryl kindly loaned the disks which still worked perfectly fine, and as a result have been fully preserved for you to check out below. Continue reading →
Thanks to the brilliant preservation work of Paladin of Genesis Project, and kindly passing his work over – we are proud to present a large list of educational game recoveries and preservations.
Some titles are listed within our GTW64 archives as missing, and others were not on anyone’s radar. Here is the complete list:
Alphabet Zoo (Floppy Disk Version)(Spinnaker) – Paladin found the floppy disk version which includes 2 other games not available on any other versions found online, including the version on GB64 (because those versions are cartridge dumps).
Dragon Games (Daybreak)
Math Baseball (Daybreak)
Keyboard Crazy (Waveform Corporation) – This one seems to require the Colortone keyboard or a keyboard overlay
Mastertype Training Grounds – The version on GB64 isn’t cracked and is a g64 so Genesis Project have cracked this one for the site.
Puzzle Mania (Readers Digest)
The Factory (Sunburst) – Differs from the HESWARE version on GB64 and has been listed on our wanted list.
The full archive can be downloaded below, and we will quickly update the relevant entries to point to this post. A huge thank you to Paladin of Genesis Project for recovering these titles and allowing them to be crossed off the preservation list.
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.
The graphics early on looked pretty good, showcasing a 2.5D view, and blocks could stack up too, with the characters being able to jump up onto them and give an extra level of depth to the game. The two main characters if you hadn’t guessed already, are dragons – or Dwagons, as the title suggests, going by the name of Snort and Snail. Continue reading 
