Games That Weren't^®

This game has actually been released on the CULT label and can be downloaded at … http://www.gb64.com/game.php?id=17406

Please get in touch if you are the person who submitted the info.

Case closed, and soon to be removed in the future.

This was a Double Dragon style game, where you had to go on a frenzy with a chainsaw and cut up as many people as possible. Chainsaw Warrior was based on the solo roleplay board game of the same name by Games Workshop.

Listed in CCI December 1988 as being developed by a team called Equinox, it was due as an 1989 release across Amiga, C64, ST and PC platforms. However, nothing would surface in any shape or form!

The game was described as an arcade action game with a lone warrior protagonist, who enters a haunted mansion to find “darkness”. “Darkness” is a huge amorphous cloud of chaos which emits a strong radiator field. It cannot be engaged in hand-to-hand combat, but has a “nerve centre” where attacks are launched against the player.

This “nerve centre” is the only vulnerable spot available to hit. The player must search the mansion room by room – fighting rats, assassins, zombies and avoiding traps and pits. Hiding and even running away where the situation demands it.

Martin Holland and Lee Cawley were behind graphics for the game. Martin informed GTW of the game’s possible existence around 2000 time and had the following to say…

“It was kinda like the Double Dragon style game but your guy went around a house with a chainsaw cutting up folks – kinda like playing the baddy instead of the good guy…… if I find anymore stuff on it I’ll pass it onto you….. “

Lee Cawley later confirmed the game as a multi-room fighting game, with a chainsaw carrying, martial arts main character.

Gary Yorke then contacted GTW64 in 2006, where he confirmed that the game was licenced by Bettertech (consisting of both Gary and James Poole) from The Games Workshop, and was to be published by Electronic Arts. Development itself was carried out by Lothlorien under contract to Bettertech.

The game was confirmed as never finished, but was nearly completed. Sadly the collapse of Lothlorien led to the closure of Bettertech, which meant that the game was never completed as a result.

At the time, Martin had most of his graphics work, so Chainsaw Warrior was likely to be present within his collection. However, he tragically passed away in 2003, where all his disks were trashed due to data protection and identity theft concerns.

We hope someday to have a surprise finding in someone’s collection, but it is looking very bleak now that anything of this game will be found. We need credits though, and the coder is still as of yet unknown. It was confirmed through an Atari ST interview that Jason C. Brooke did music for at least the ST edition, though it isn’t clear if that included C64 too. Should hopefully find this out shortly.

Gary did however dig out a mock-up of the Chainsaw Warrior cover and how it may have looked when released by EA, so this has been added to the scans.

If you can help us with any information, then please do get in touch.

Advertised in many magazines, this was a title being sold by Anik Microsystems… however only two Anik games exist and seem to have been released on the C64.

The advert describes the game as follows:

"Control the atomic reaction in this game of skill. Great graphics – super sound."

The game sounds very much so like a puzzler of somekind, though we are just speculating. The game was being sold very cheaply at around £4, compared to the higher price of their titles in Gamebase. Maybe this was a simple BASIC game that was being sold for quick profit?

We know very little more about this than the above, a lot more research needed and hopefully we will find some of the people who used to work for Anik.

More to come soon hopefully…

A hit on the SNES and a fairly well known arcade from Data East.. Featured two caveman which had to destroy dino’s and basically get through scrolling platform levels which ended with huge guardians to bash hell out off.

Very similar in some ways to Chuck Rock.. Elite lost interest in the scene while the game was still being coded, and it was scrapped along with some other promising releases.

Very early on when we first added the entry to the site, we heard suggestions that Eldritch The Cat were behind the conversion. Stuart Fotheringham, who worked as part of the crew helped us with our enquiry into this game many moons ago:

“Perhaps Marc Dawson was working on Caveman Ninja after I left Eldritch The Cat, but I’m pretty sure ETC was 16-bit only and original software only (no conversions). Steve Wetherill (now a director of Westwood Studios and C&C fame) was also an Eldritch The Cat founder.”

Marc Wilding unfortunately could not recall anything of a C64 version, so we are still left in limbo with this game. Steve Day then told us the following:

“ETC had negotiated with a certain UK publisher to develop several versions of Joe & Mac, including the C64 version; however, all I can say is that for various reasons development was never commenced. So, I guess you can say that we *almost* worked on Joe & Mac C64. :) “

The new High Voltage Sid Collection update came out on Christmas day in 2009 and contained some new tunes from Reyn Ouwehand, one of which included “Caveman Ninja”. So it seems that Reyn was to produce tunes for a conversion. There is a link with Reyn and ETC, as Reyn had done part of the music for the Amiga version of Last Ninja 3 – a game that ETC had converted. Reyn could not recall who was behind any development. However, Steve Wetherill would confirm that Reyn wasn’t involved in the ETC developments.

In March 2024, Steve Wetherill posted on his blog about the last days of ETC, and Caveman Ninja was spoken about and described as a “final nail in the coffin” for the company. ETC had entered discussions to do all the home computer versions of the game for Amiga, ST, C64 and Spectrum. A fee of £50,000 was negotiated with a £10,000 advance.

Steve states that a local programmer was lined up to work on the 8-bit versions, and it is suggested that Jim Savage and Martin Calvert would be on art duties. Steve confirmed that it was a chap called Terry Sanders who was assigned, but no work was ever started. Unfortunately, before the advance could be transferred, the publisher changed its mind and this would be the end of ETC.

However, there are a few odd things that still occurred. On the ZX Spectrum, Clive Townsend (developer/designer of Saboteur) created some demos, but it seems this was unrelated to ETC. Perhaps Elite had afterwards approached Clive separately?

It suggests that nothing ever got started, but then there is the curiosity of Clive’s ZX Spectrum demos that leaked and Reyn’s C64 music too. Did anyone start anything of a C64 conversion after ETC? Only time will tell.

Originally it was wondered if this Blue Ribbon entry for a game called “Cavefighter” was related to the 1984 Bubble Bus release.

In August 2025, it was confirmed by Warren Pilkington to be just that, so not a unique title that was yet to be recovered. So its a case closed!