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 online since 1999, and long before that offline.
Please Browse our archive and discover the many entries that we host for many different platforms.
Not unreleased it seems, but a hard to find set of titles which aid with writing which had been missing for some time.
Allan Pinkerton has kindly preserved 3 of 4 titles in the series, which we are pleased to be able to present here for download, along with manuals and leaflet scans.
The 4th title: Castles and Creatures was still at large, but in May 2022 – Allan also found and preserved this title too, so here it is!
With thanks to Allan Pinkerton for his fantastic preservation efforts and case closed!
Harold was to be a cool Pacman clone of sorts being produced back in 1992 by Dennis Osborn. A good start was made on the game before it was abandoned.
30 years later, Dennis resurrected the game and decided to finish it off as a way of showcasing what could be done with his new Vision Basic package.
Originally the game was being produced in Machine Language using a custom built monitor, which was difficult to use. This and other factors would contribute to the game being cancelled (or at least parked for 30 years).
Although the finished off game can be checked out at https://visionbasic.net/harold-the-game/ – it would be interesting to see something of the original game too to compare.
A slightly dodgy entry into the GTW archives which was highlighted thanks to contributors @DanTilert and @tommixhelsinki.
Swedish magazine Datormagazin ran a short article on porn games in 1987, and within the article as the mention of a game called Silvia, created by Swedish hacker groups.
The game features Queen Silvia of Sweden “busy with something completely unmentionable”, and was described as a “very ugly attack on Queen Silvia” that was already widely circulating among computer interested young people in Sweden.
Little else is known about the “game” at this stage, though we haven’t yet been able to find any trace of it. Only a music file with the name Silvia, and a demo featuring someone else completely. If this was spread around, then it maybe wasn’t spread as much as first thought.
If you know anything more about the game or can help us find and preserve it, then please let us know.
Our list of different editions of released C64 games continues to grow with the inclusion now of Shadow of the Beast.
This came as a bit of a surprise to us, when Nick Pelling tweeted in 2022 that he had pitched to Psygnosis to do a C64 conversion of the game.
Nick had heard on the grapevine that the conversion was up for grabs, so demoed it on spec. He spent approximately a weekend knocking together a decent looking demo.
Graphics were possibly created by Paul (Dokk) Docherty as well, and there was a decent parallax effect with a walking character, clouds and a moon etc.
It was sent it off and then Nick went on holiday. When he came back, Psygnosis had already assigned it to another team and the game was eventually released on cartridge.
So not a major development, but it would be a very interesting curiosity to see some day. Sadly Nick has confirmed that he no longer has anything of the demo, and Paul doesn’t think it was him who did the graphics either.
If you know anything more about this development, please let us know.
Seems we are building quite a collection of abandoned Tetris conversions, now with the addition of yet another called Tetrix.
This was recovered from a set of Hungarian disks by Csaba Virag, and was written back in 1987 by two people called Pavai & Virag.
It is completely playable, and there is a second earlier version which is not playable at all.
It is unknown who this was being produced for, if it was for a company or just for fun. Hopefully those involved will see this page and get in touch to shed some light on the development. Was it ever polished up and completed?
A very short entry to highlight a currently missing title which may or may not have been released. Possibly an education title with the LOGO language by No Man’s Land, was it completed or released? Can you help us find and preserve the title? Well, thanks to Marco ‘Exile’ Das, we learn that both LOGO-Logic 1 and 2 were released and just need to be preserved:
It is hoped that both will be digitally preserved soon, so they can be checked off the list. For now we’ll keep this entry open until then. With thanks to Bertrand / Atari Frog from http://www.atarimania.com for flagging up.
Following on from the recent recovery of Scarabaeus 2, yet another Andromeda preview has been found and recovered thanks again to Thomas Sol Sunhede and Hedning, Zyron and Whisper of Genesis Project.
Again, this disk was in a bundle of Greve Graphics games, which suggests that Andromeda sent this and Scarabaeus 2 to pitch the games in some way.
The game is a graphical adventure game where you play a journalist who has an opportunity to bring a large scale case to light at Hotel Mogul. You type in commands to progress through the game.
In terms of progression, there is a fair amount of content to this preview, but Whisper (after hours of testing/playing through) has found that it seems to be incomplete and with flaws that prevent it from being completable.
When playing the preview, we highly recommend reading the accompanying and detailed note file first, which talks through how to play the game and some of the flaws present.
At this moment in time, we’re not sure who the developer was and why the game never saw a release in the end. Was it perhaps by the same developers as Interview? We will try and find any press details relating to the title to try and shed more light soon.
For now, check out this brilliant recovery by Genesis Project!
Another combined entry for a series of titles from Sprites Software, which may or may not have been released. At present the following titles are missing:
Périls – written by Hervé Le Marchand (catalog number: CM013)
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.
