Documenting unreleased, cancelled and prototype video games.
Welcome to Games That Weren't!
We are an unreleased and cancelled 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 games that were never released to the public. Sharing history and stories from the developers, assets and more before it is too late.
Grzegorz Antosiewicz has kindly provided a number of titles and scans showcasing assets that never quite made the final build, so here is another post looking at one of those titles. Blastar was a neat multi-directional shooter which got mixed reviews from the press at the time.
Blork was a very stylish underwater shooter being created by the demo group Scienide (http://www.scienide.de/) around the mid-late 90s, where you control a cute fish main character and his octopus friend within a very dark and gloomy underwater world. Development was by Ply2, with music by Exodus and graphics by Blork and Nytech.
We are blessed to have a number of various preservation projects dedicated to unreleased/prototype games, especially with the vast number of platforms out there to try and preserve for. The Hidden Palace have for many years been preserving various prototypes and unreleased games across 16-bit (and onwards) platforms and this weekend they have announced one of their biggest endeavours yet.
Over 700 PlayStation 2 prototypes have been archived for you to check out, and there is much more to come too. Keep checking out for news and updates over at https://hiddenpalace.org/News/Project_Deluge:_PlayStation_2
Occasionally we take a break from covering games that were never released, but also look at titles that were released, but had some distinctive differences at one stage or another.
Today we’re covering Cardiaxx, which was released by Electronic Zoo in 1991 and then later by Team 17 in 1993. Thanks to Grzegorz Antosiewicz, here are some highlighted features shown in the press at the time that never made it to the final game:
In early previews from magazines such as K issue 54, Generation4 1991 September, Power Play 1991 12, TGM issue 12 – Grzegorz highlights that you can see unused bosses and power ups pods for your ship.
Whilst many had long abandoned the Amiga as a platform, there were those who were still trying to keep the dream alive, and one such team was the Italian based Darkage Software who were producing a number of games back in 2000.
As well as the impressive 3D title Tales of Heaven, they were also working on a game called Alive, which was a sort of a Super Stardust clone, but with many more objects on screen and moving a lot faster overall…. A sort of bullet-hell version it seems! It was featured briefly in the press of the time and looked pretty decent overall, as you can see from the screenshots in the gallery.
Brutal Speed was a racing game planned for the AGA Amiga, briefly previewed in Italian Games Machine magazine issue 65 under the name of Speed Mania. It was also known as Speed ManiaX and eventually evolved into Brutal Speed.
It was an impressive title that had 8 directional scroll at 1/4 pixels and 128 colours in total. It was similar in many ways to Super Cars 2, Overdrive and the likes of Neo Drift on the Neo Geo. Continue reading
What happens when you smash together Gremlin, arcade manufacturer Bell-Fruit and development team Attention To Detail? Well, back in 1993, the result was to be an arcade release of Gremlin’s popular ninja platformer, Zool.
With BF/ATD looking to create a series of arcade games, they hooked up with Gremlin at the 1992 September European Computer Trade Show and felt that Zool was a perfect candidate for their new upcoming arcade hardware. Amiga Action magazine reported at the time that BF/ATD would be mostly handling a conversion, with Gremlin just overseeing. The aim was to produce around 2000 cabinets for release, and along with Zool, Rise of the Robots was also to see a transition to arcade too.
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.
