Games That Weren't^®

Brides Of Dracula was a strange game from a relatively unknown company on the C64, Gonzo Games. However, Paul Smith and Steve Howard were known from their days at Viz Design, where they had created Werewolves of London and Brides of Frankenstein. This new game would be an unofficial sequel to that latter game.

The game would feature a split screen huge smooth scrolling game area with nice GFX. You could enter various rooms or go outside picking up various weapons and solving puzzles with either 1 or 2 players controlling either Dracula or Van Helsing.

Encountered each other, you then would have the chance to hinder the other players progress. Similar in most ways to the Spy VS Spy trilogy with more to do etc.

Alan Botwright, the game’s creator, spoke to GTW and informed that the reason this game was never released, was due to the fact that Gonzo did not pay Alan or any of the team for their work and Gonzo Games subsequently disappeared. It is most likely that Gonzo Games went under before the C64 version could be finished and the team paid.

When asked about the game’s existence now, Alan replied.. “It was 98% finished! I Might have an old version in a floppy disk somewhere. Unfortunately I now longer own a 64 or disk drive!”

With some more contacting to do with Alan, and possibly the off chance of him allowing GTW to find the game, we may see the game one day soon in the archives. A competition was ran in Zzap 64 (87), as with Daffy Duck, and the following people were promised a copy of the game with a leather jacket with the game’s artwork.

Mr M Yeoman, Kenton, Middlesex wins game plus leather jacket with game artwork on back. Runners-up are; Mr A Fraser, Moy, Inverness-shire; Master E Frawley, St Pauls, Glos; Chris Pearce, Meole Village, Shropshire; Steve Bromfield, Ashton-under-Hill, Evesham; David Madon, Hemsworth, W Yorks)

Did any of these people get a full game? It is very unlikely, as Alan confirmed that the game wasn’t actually finished. In 2014, we got in touch again and the news wasn’t great. Alan has many disks, but it is unknown what is on them – most will be just random code from his demo coding days.

There could well be Brides work on some of the disks, but they will likely be in PC format – as the game was developed on a PDS based system. Alan offers hope that some day it could be dug out, but with family commitments – it may never happen. GTW has offered its assistance with checking out any disks and preserving though, so you never know.

Paul Smith of Gonzo Games could now be the last remaining hope, but with a name so common on the internet – we may never find him. Alan suggests he was the last person to have the game for certain and the development system itself. Could Paul be found some day to shed some light?

A successful film sequel and a widely promoted game in both Commodore Format and Commodore Force magazines here in the UK from between 1992-1993. Konami, not often known for releasing their own C64 games at that time, decided that their computer licence of Batman Returns should be spread over to the C64 as well as the others.

Who better to recruit for the job, but a member of Denton Designs, Roy Bannon. Already producing the great World Class Rugby for Audiogenic the year before, Roy was given the job of the C64 conversion, along with Ally Noble, Dawn Jones and Paul Salmon helping with the graphics.

To follow Roy’s progress through the game, a number of previews were shown in both Commodore Format and Commodore Force, with the latter in particular going further by doing a short-lived ‘Diary of a game’. This showed a gradual process of the game, showing much promise and gorgeous main character animations ported across from the Amiga version. The game followed the exact same design as the Amiga conversion and followed closely to the film.

However, it seemed that all was not well when the final diary entry in Commodore Force didn’t really focus on progress of the game at all. It strangely depicted Roy going off on holiday and deciding that the game should take a hike. No further diary entries were shown of the game. You can see the diary entries in the downloads below by the way.

By this time, it was late 1993 and the Commodore 64 market was in rapid decline. Roy himself confirmed to GTW that the game was canned by Konami, because they felt that it wasn’t a viable project to continue with and money couldn’t be made on it.

According to Roy, only two levels were actually ever fully completed. The first level being fully complete and playable, and the second level half completed. There was likely to be bits of the other levels running, but with no game play implemented. Our guess is that the level maps and graphics were all completed, so really it was just music and other levels to be finished. Paul Salmon suggested that the conversion was coming on very well and was playing very well too, with all the complicated fight sequences in place too with the two levels that ran.

Once the Amiga version eventually surfaced, it was completely panned by the press and was a disastrous title overall. It was seen as lacking excitement and was just a simple platform title with the Batman name applied to it. Perhaps though things could have been different with the C64 version? Will we ever know?

It is hit and miss as to whether anything still survives of the C64 game, and after many years things haven’t been forthcoming. A series of demos were created for Konami, but Roy has not been able to find anything. Demo copies sent to the magazines are likely to have been long discarded, even though we have tried those routes.

John Heap, Paul Salmon and Ally Noble all confirmed that they no longer had anything of the game. Although Ally has suggested that there could be old disks in her attic, that hopefully someday could be examined.

The hope now sits with Roy and some other miraculous way for the game to be saved. It doesn’t look good though I’m afraid.

A rather intriguing title this time which may not interest some, as it is a SEUCK title which has gone missing.

The Absolute Beginning (TAB) was produced by Asif A Bhagwandin for the Zzap megatape, and was sent in and first mentioned in an article called “How to be a Megastar”, which told readers what it takes to get their game on the covermount.

The game was a Forgotten Worlds clone which looked rather good, and apparently played very well too according to the reviewers. Sadly Zzap never used the game on their covermount, but did use another of Asif’s games later on. Yet another game was unused and was also due for inclusion on Commodore Force’s covermount.

Asif tells GTW:

“My first effort (the one you’re looking for) and was pretty lame, I’m speaking to a few old friends of mine to see if they can locate a copy. I’m sure I gave some out.. might take a week or so but I’ll let you know..”

Sadly as time passed, a flood destroyed all of Asif’s past work and it seems all of his disks were destroyed too. Chances of TAB and his other titles surviving is small now.

Last hopes remain on his friends having the games on disk/tape somewhere (though it has been some years and we haven’t heard anything), or even Asif himself finding a copy of his games. I’m sure he would be very happy to find them again, and we hope to find them also.  We know that Zzap didn’t keep anything from back then.

Axeman is a title which we currently know very little about. All we have is a single screenshot which we have had in a folder for many years. We’re hoping that the screenshot may jog some memories about the game itself.

We assume it was a little run and hack game being developed, but could it have been more?

Check out the loading screen and if you know anything about this game, please get in touch!

Can you help us with this game?

Early days, but thanks to c64.com and in an interview, we are able to put up an entry about a game by Pagoda Software which was reported to be something very ground-breaking for its time, which sadly never quite made it.

Before Video Classics (Aka Blip!) came about, Jason Daniels and Tom Lanigan were working on a new game called Autoguard. According to both, the game was the most significant piece of work they did. It was the first time they tried to design and code a fully-fledged commercial game, and rather than starting with something relatively quick and easy – they threw themselves into the deep-end by spending a year and a half working on this ground-breaking game, unlike any other title seen on the C64.

Unfortunately this is all we know at present about the game, and also we didn’t actually know what the game was comparable to or going to look like until Jason Daniels supplied GTW with some screenshots.

The great news was that Jason and Tom both have dug out remains of the game, and planned to finish and release around 2012. We were asked to keep an eye on the Pagoda Facebook page for any screenshots or developments and also check out the recent C64.com article which tells more about the game here: http://www.c64.com/articles/autoguard.html

Jason added the following update on the game:

“We will hopefully be releasing video of Autoguard gameplay in the near future and there is no exclusivity on that, so I will send you a copy when it’s ready. We are hoping to edit the raw video into some sort of promo with some original backing music (music and SFX hadn’t been done when we shelved the game).”

After a long delay, we asked Jason on how things were going. It was basically going slowly, and is still on Jason’s long term to-do list, but was still some time before it would get finished. Almost over 10 years after we first reported about the game, it looked like it may have been cancelled, but there is some good news at last.

We met with developer Jason Daniels at the Retro Collective in February 2025 (see gallery) when a talk was given about Games That Weren’t. Jason demonstrated the prototype, including a rare glimpse at a section where you could build your droid. There was some amazing hydraulics animations and segments which were mind-blowing for something from around 1987. Tom’s graphics and Jason’s code looked fantastic!

The isometric engine was clearly ahead of its time, and featured some wonderful hi-res overlaid sprites and a sub game which could be activated within the actual game screen. It was certainly something to behold.

Jason is now working at Retro Collective within the Developer Den, and hopes to re-create the innovative isometric engine to use for a few other game developments. Afterwhich, there are plans to finally finish Autoguard and release on a new label from the Retro Collective. More details on this very soon.

When we hear more details, we’ll continue to update this page. Watch this space!