Unreleased & Cancelled Video Games across many platforms.
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. GTW has been preserving video game history since 1999.
ICOM Simulations, the makers of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, were to follow up with a title called Global Golf: The Earth Invitational.
Announced around Summer 1993, the game would give you the chance to play on hypothetical holes on places like Everest, the desert and the Grand Canyon. The game had been in development for sometime, and PC Player magazine showed a single screenshot of the game in action (in what seems to be at the Grand Canyon). Continue reading →
Platforms: Commodore Amiga 1200/CD32, PC and Game Boy Advance
It may have been a basic fighting game with simple graphics, but Franko: The Crazy Revenge did pretty well in the Polish games market in 1994 and has a hardcore set of fans today. It resulted in a sequel that was started in 1995, with a whole host of new features and enhancements over the original game.
Early build on either Amiga/PC.
When mentioned in snippets as early as 1995, the game was said to be including digitized backgrounds and characters, with a series of new moves being developed. You would be able to interact more with your surroundings, picking up garbage cans and the like and using as projectiles, and the game was to be a lot gorier! Your main character would also have over 200 frames of animation, compared to the dozen or so which the original game’s character had. Continue reading →
Following on from our report about a possible Gods conversion on the PC Engine, we now take a look at what seemed to be a conversion of Toaplan’s Snow Bros that was due for release in the early 1990s.
A PC Engine screenshot, or a screenshot from another platform?
Advertised in Electronic Gaming Monthly Magazines in September 1992, it appeared with a number of others for sale from a company called Gametronix. Present was a single screenshot, which may or may not have been from the PC Engine game.
Considering just how well Parasol Stars came out on the platform, there’s no doubt that Snow Bros would have been a great fit for the machine. But as with conversions on other platforms, such as the Amiga, the game would never see release in the end.
As the game was shown just in a short advert, there was no detail about when the game was coming out or how it was looking/playing. The screenshot may have even been from a different platform, and therefore we don’t know yet if any conversion was actually ever started or not.
Paranoia Dragon found a suggestion that Naxat Soft were the intended publisher, so there is a possible lead to try and found out more and if anything was ever started.
Was the screenshot a rare glimpse of a conversion that got far? Or just vapourware overall? If you know anything more about the conversion, please do get in touch.
With thanks to Paranoia Dragon for flagging up the title and for the scans.
Gallery
A PC Engine screenshot, or a screenshot from another platform?
A quick post thanks to Bertrand / Atari Frog, to highlight the recent recovery of an unpreserved educational title for the C64 called Matchmaker: Grammar. Released in 1983 by American Educational Computer.
The disk was preserved by SoulBuster on the AtariAge forums, who has prolifically been preserving many a Atari 400/800 title. With Matchmaker, there was an Atari version one side, and C64 the other. The download can be found below.
Following on from last week’s post on Euro Round-Up: Czech Republic, another recovery has been made from the archives of Frey United Software with another football manager game due out for the Commodore Amiga 1200 in 2001/2001. The game was being created by the Barczyński brothers, and was written in AMOS.
Santa Monica FC European Challenge utilized a very similar engine/process to Euro Round-Up: Czech Republic and may have been part of the same series. We’ll add more details as we learn more over time. Continue reading →
The PC Engine/TurboGrax-16 is a wonderful platform with a wide range of titles, including my favourite – Parasol Stars. As the platform started to get a little bit of traction, we began to see a large number or promised titles – Gods would be one of many which were promised, but would never see the light of day.
Was this really a PC engine screenshot? Perhaps not?
Gods was a stunning looking platform/puzzler that would see conversions to a number of platforms over the years. It was PC Engine Fan magazine in June 1992 which posted a preview of the game and mentioned it as coming soon for that particular platform. Continue reading →
Another recovery and release in 2024, this time with a football manager game which was due out for the Commodore Amiga 1200 in 2001/2001. The game was being created by the Barczyński brothers, and was written in AMOS.
Euro Round-Up: Czech Republic was the first of several management games planned by Frey United Software, which would simulate European football – all games would utilize the same interface and style. This particular development would focus on Czech Republic and its teams. Continue reading →
Following on from Wrath of the Demon was a new title from ReadySoft called The King’s Ransom, with the same level of detailed animations, but a bit more in the way of interactions and inventory. The game was due for release on both the Commodore Amiga and PC back in 1993. The story would go as follows:
Long ago, a circle of the most powerful wizards in the land bound the myriad forces of evil into several small crystals and hid them within a distant mountain. This was not enough to contain them, however, and the evil festered and grew. Your king has asked you, the bravest warrior in the land, to seek out and destroy the crystals before the evil can consume the entire kingdom.
The game was a mix of arcade and graphic adventure – where you would build your character’s attributes and arm them with a variety of weapons and armour to battle over 40 creatures across 150 locations. Continue reading →
“It seems Astrology was only listed in a single Atari catalog in late 1980 before being canned, although the author appears to have continued tweaking it until early 1982. Rather surprisingly, this title was written by John Dunn of VCS Superman fame and looks complete. If you want to play around with the program, you’ll find some easy-to-follow instructions written by John Hardie with the .atr file.”
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