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.

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All Terrain Gardener

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

Apart from the odd clip in a few of the Commodore magazines, nothing was much seen or heard about this little game. It wasn’t until Commodore Format ran a feature, Where are they now, when they mentioned Ubik (David Korn) and a few of his games.

All Terrain Gardener was one of these, and again thoughts were about the existence of the game. The game involves is to save a garden of flowers from a flood of water which gradually increases, by digging up the flowers and putting them to safety. Featuring cool overlaid sprites and graphics by Paul Docherty (Dokk), and a good rendition of “Flight Of The Bumblebee” by Tonal Teapot, the game had the makings of a winner.

ATG was the last game that Ubik wrote on the C64. The game was fully completed, but unfortunately at the time of completion, British Telecom who owned Firebird, decided that Firebird was not making enough money and sold everything off to MicroProse. Therefore ATG remained unpublished.

Ubik told Commodore Zone in an interview that Gary Liddon badgered him to dust the game down and tidy it up, which they did. Removing bugs, glitches and tweaking the game, Ubik offered it to Codemasters, whom never replied. And so ATG gathered dust once more.

There was talk of the game being converted to the Colour Gameboy, from Gary Liddon, but this would never materialize in the end.

Around 1999/2000 time, Commodore Zone magazine got in contact with Ubik for an interview, where Ubik then gave a full copy of ATG for their covermount, along with permission to use his other programs.

A neat little game that eventually saw release.

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

A-Team, The

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

A possibly late licence for The Edge to consider, but The A-Team was a particular game which they had in the pipeline.
There had been previous attempts, such as a poor VCS 2600 version, so maybe there was hope in Edge to deliver the goods of this classic comedy action adventure.

No such luck, as apart from one or two mentions in magazines, nothing ever surfaced of the game, and eventually The Edge went up in a puff of smoke. No screenshots, previews or anything seem to have been mentioned, though if you spot anything, then please let us know!

It is unknown what the game was like, or how it was shaping up. Hopefully someone from The Edge will confirm some details someday. It is possible that Softek had some role to play in the game being produced, but again as with Snoopy & Peanuts, this will need to be chased up.

For now we document and simply include a title which we know was penned for release, but never happened…

Sadly missing from our screens, both Television and C64…

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Asylum

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Intriguing title for our next GTW comes in the form of Asylum. From a feature on a show in Your Commodore magazine, the game was described in more detail as a top view three player interactive heavy metal fantasy action adventure coin-op (A bit of a mouthful!!). A bit more research and we discover that it was an arcade conversion of a Leyland coin-op in 1991.
The game looks a lot like a 3 player gauntlet game with heavy metal band running around doing stuff. You play as characters Rip, Rak or Rol and throw weapons and weird enemies in the asylum, collect power-ups and defeat bosses to advance levels (Quoted from Wikipedia).

We originally believed that this may have been part of a trilogy done by the guys who did Bloodwych and the unreleased Legend for Mirrorsoft/Imageworks. However we now know it isn’t quite the case and actually Storm could well have been involved on the game. Storm is still strongly linked to another Leyland game Brute Force from several magazines of the time, although some ex-developers from Storm have said that they never had the licence to the game. But possibly management did have plans of some sort to convert the two Leyland games.

We need more confirmation from various parties on our findings so far, but hopefully this won’t take too long. We need to establish what this game was more about, and how far it ever got before cancellation.

How far did this game get?… Was it ever even started?…. Certainly the C64 was more than capable of this game, so what happened??…

More information needed…

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Astromine

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

Astromine is another brainchild of C64 maestro, Jon Wells, and one of my personal favourites too along with City Bomber.

This can only be described as an old school C64 game in the style of many classic C64 games. We have a mix of Manic Miner, Pitfall 2, Nodes Of Yesod and various snippets of other classics. The whole collaboration was to turn into Astromine, which put you in control of an astronaut called Ned. Ned, in his hi-res glory, could jump, swim, climb, slide, shoot, crawl and all sorts of other neat things to add to his flexibility.

Essentially, Astromine was to be a multipart game with many different styles of game play combined into one single load. One level would be very similar to a screen from Manic Miner, with all sorts of features such as a sliding pole, water and teleports. Another level would take you to a different stage of the game, where you could be swimming underwater, flying with a jetpack or even flying a ship around. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure of the EXACT plan for the game.

What I tell you here is the result of a set of long phone conversations dating back to around 1997, where all these ideas were being bounced around. A very enthusiastic Jon was very adamant that he had something very special here, and the variety would blow people away. The ideas certainly got me excited, and I was sold.

Sadly, Astromine was one of Jon’s last attempts to get some software support, but after the failure of Supportware. Jon had no incentive to complete the game, and so it was shelved. A whole array of excellent ideas were lost.

Jon did however release a special 1 level preview, which was the Manic Miner style level I earlier described. This featured superb animation on the main character, and a whole neat array of things to do, such as crawl, teleport and slide. The game also came with some excellent Rob Hubbard style tunes which Jon also composed. Had this game been completed, it could have been a real classic.

It is possible that we will see some more of this game someday, though Jon has also mentioned that this could have ideas used from it for other stuff. So its not known yet if we can release more of the game. A few more levels were done, with some more variety and rumoured to be a little easier to play (The demo was a tad off putting for some with its pixel perfect jumping).

For now we present the demo which many of you have probably played already. Check it out and when you dig into it, you’ll see what a nice little old school game this was shaping to be. Maybe we’ll see more some day soon…

A piece of classic style gaming…

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 1 Comment

Assassins

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

A cool little Bomberman clone with the name of "Assassins", is the next game in A to greet us, and for the GTW archives.

This is a fair clone of the classic game by Hudson, and does its best to include the elements which made the original great… apart from the fact there seems to be no computer players, and only one other player at that.

Graphics are simplistic, and sound is a little ear grating, but the playability element is there for two people to have a blast.

There is not much in the game apart from blasting each other to bits, and there is plenty of bugs and glitches, however, it is only a preview. It seems an early preview at that.

The game never eventuated into a full release, though with a bit of work, it could have made a good game. With the finished bomberman clones out there, it may have trouble to add something new to the genre.

Contact will try to be made to find out exactly how far the game reached, though there is another strange game in the GTW archives, which is a minature version of this game (!).

A popular concept which never made the final hurdle…

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Arwag

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Arwag was to be an Ultima based game written by Ruben Spaans (aka Scroll/Megastyle) which was shaping up to be pretty good. Ruben explains more about the game:

"A role-playing game similar to the older Ultima games. It was in the early stages, but fully playable. I don’t think I’ve sent this to anyone on the c64 or told anyone, as it was made very late in my c64 career. I plan to put it up on my website soon. (I actually made a PC version which was 95% done.)"

Very kindly Ruben has dug out the game to share with others, and you can see just how much promise it had for yourselves. Included with the download is a small text file with keys to use in the game. Be warned that it can crash sometimes as it is an early stage preview, but there is enough there to allow you to explore and play the game a little.

This was all there ever was of the game, only the PC version as Ruben has mentioned got further. Ruben moved onto pastures new and the game was canned, and will unfortunately never be completed! Thanks to Slator for the tidied up version of the game!

Case closed!

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Arctic Moves

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

It is thanks to the great efforts of the team at C64 Endings which helped to highlight our next GTW to enter the archives.

On completion of Navy Moves, you are presented with some text which says to watch out for the next adventure, Arctic Moves. However, it seems that this never quite made it to fruition.

Well, after some research it seems that the game at least made it onto the PC, but not until around 1993/94 under the new label of Dinamic Multimedia. The game was more of the same, with a mix of After the War, and typically set in the Arctic.

Thanks to Santiago we have found that Luis was interviewed recently and we discover that the Atari ST and Amiga versions were written in 1991, but sadly never released due to Dinamic folding at that time.

In 1995, Luis resurrected the game for the newly reformed Dinamic Multimedia label on the PC, but it wasn’t that well recieved. By then it was all pologons.

It seems we didn’t miss too much. But it would have been nice to see something. However, it is believed that the C64 version would have only followed after the release of the Amiga and ST versions had they made it, and its believed it was never even started due to being so late as well. Last Dinamic games were in 1990 it seems on the C64.

And sadly Luis confirms that the game was infact never even started for the C64. It was too late!… The ending text therefore was wishful thinking in Navy Moves.

Case closed sadly….

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 1 Comment

Giana 2 – Arthur And Martha In Future World

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

This is in fact what would become Hard ‘N’ Heavy, the unofficial sequel to Giana Sisters. Well, it was actually once the OFFICIAL sequel to Giana before Nintendo had stepped in. Many of us learnt about the sequel in the UK thanks to Ian Osborne’s unreleased games feature in Commodore Force magazine.

Originally it was to be titled “Giana 2 – Arthur and Martha in Future World”, the game was to feature the famous twosome from the first game and was well underway until Nintendo came by and put a stop to the first game.

Attempting to break away from its “Mario” link, the theme and characters of the game were changed. It’s still a sort of Super Mario Bros clone, but far less obvious. The game was renamed to Hard ‘N’ Heavy, and had two futuristic robot sprites with overlays as Arthur and Martha replacements.

Although the game was released in Germany and other areas, the game never saw release in the UK. GO! / U.S. Gold were likely scared off from the commotion with Giana Sisters.

Hard ‘N’ Heavy can be downloaded from within these archives. Essentially it is exactly the same game was what would have been Giana 2, but without the Giana sprites which you can see in early previews of the game and within the gallery section! There may possibly be some other minor changes as well.

So what about the Giana version of the game with the Giana sprites? Possibly with not only a name/sprite change, but potentially also levels and titles, GTW hopes to try and find the remains of the game before it turned into Hard ‘N’ Heavy and obtain what looks like the screenshots we have here.

Recently GTW was helped out by Stefan Lindberg, who uncovered the artist who created the front cover for Giana 2. This seems to have been done before the game was changed to Hard and Heavy. Check it out in the scans section!

Can you help us find this version?

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Arthema

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

A really wonderful game produced by Timsoft, whom are well renound for their impressive C64 games in the late 90’s.

The game is a polished single screen platformer, where you control a little blob with a hi-res overlay, collecting all the objects on the screen before progressing to the next level. You have the odd creature to avoid though, so jumping and moving at the right moment is crucial.

You get all the bits really, the snazzy introduction, the cool titles and the music (Created by the great Moog). Everything in the making of a popular game.

The preview comes with 4 levels, which look great to the eye, and the game plays well. Its nothing spectacular in terms of playability, but its certainly one of the better unreleased games on the C64.

Did I say unreleased?… well, it wouldn’t be in GTW otherwise. Unfortunatly, it is in GTW for that exact reason. No full game exists anywhere at the moment of this nice little gem, though recent information has surfaced from comankh that the game was actually completed, but never released because of the dying C64 market in 1995.

Robert Kan recently mentioned the following about Arthema:

“Arthema – our best and last game. Unfortunatly, despite the fact that publisher has bought the game from us, this game was never released. We hope to be able to release it in some form in future. This game was created under label of the best polish C64 game development team – Inflexion Development.”

So it seems that a full version does infact exist and now we are trying to find out more and see if we can obtain either the full game to share with you, or find out more about the plans for this complete game.

Still in 2014, the game has yet to be found with the following update from Robert:

“As regarding Arthema – nothing has changed since … I don’t remember when This game was sold and can’t be sold again by us – this is obvious for me. Maybe at some point of the future we will try to contact the company that bought it from us to release it. For the very moment let it be as is, believe me – we were discussing this topic several times in the past”

A stunning preview, but encouraginly one with a full version maybe around the corner…

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Arsenal FC

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

To follow Arsenal winning the English Premier league, Thalamus gained the rights to produce a game based on the big club.

The guy behind the game was none other than creator of past Thalamus hits, Summer Camp and Winter Camp, John D Ferrari. Not only that, the Rowland brothers were also lending a helping hand on the conversion. This was found out from an interview with John and the Rowlands in 1992 (See Entry Gallery) in Commodore Power magazine.

Thalamus unfortunately folded about a year after Zzap’s publisher’s Newsfield fell through, and any projects left over were left in limbo, including their “Arsenal” licence. This was confirmed after Commodore Force ran a quick obituary to “Arsenal” and Thalamus in a later issue, supplied with a screenshot of the Amiga version of Emlyn Hughes (Strange eh?). That was it, nothing was ever seen of the game.

However, it seems that an Amiga preview did actually make its way out. Of course, we’d rather see the C64 version! :)

Commodore Power’s interview with John never really mentioned much about the game, apart from John’s enthusiasm for working on the conversion.

According to sources, the Amiga game was not shaping up that well, though it seems the C64 version may have been a different case altogether. In a Thalamus newsletter recovered by contributor David Jorge, Thalamus seemed very enthusiastic by the progress being made by John.

They felt that the game looked great, and John was apparently confident (having seen the competition) that Arsenal FC was going to be the best footie game seen on the C64. With John’s coding credentials, then it was certainly a possibility. It mentioned that the C64 edition was due for release in September/Mid-October 1992.

However, we may never find out how it played, as sadly as John passed away in 1996 due to a heart condition. A huge shame as John produced many titles that many of us grew up with. Chances are now becoming more and more remote for it to be found.

For now, check out some tunes by Warren Pilkington, which were produced and pitched to Thalamus for the game, but either rejected or not used because of the game being cancelled. Some extra tunes and sfx were recovered in 2015 and added as well, as well as some notes from Warren himself about the tunes.

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 7 Comments