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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Eros

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

A short entry for a title that could well have been released and sold, but perhaps in limited numbers. The game has yet to be preserved.

The game is an erotic adventure game, where you are about to embark on a trip to Eros, an uncharted island in the South Pacific Ocean.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to save yourself and the people of Eros, from the impending eruption of the formidable Mount Zayton. Along the way, you will encounter adventure, obstacles and erotic sexual experiences. Well, that’s most teenagers of that era sold then!

According to the advert, the game was for adults only (of course!), and was an interactive fiction game where you control the story, but the story “controls your mind”. Where your experiences while on Eros will “stimulate your imagination and create vivid images in your own mind’s eye”.

<cough> So in the name of preservation, if you happen to have a copy of this game, please do get in touch. In the meantime, we are as of yet unsure if it ever saw the light of day.

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RabbitJack’s Casino

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

A short entry for a title that was released, but seems to be at large at the moment, like Habitat was for many years.

As with Habitat, RabbitJack’s Casino was a game that was created for the Quantum Link service and consisted of four games including stud poker, bingo, slot machine and blackjack. It was created by Rob Fulop, who created classics such as Demon Attack and Cosmic Ark on the Atari 2600.

More details about this and other work by Rob can be read at Scott Stilphen’s fantastic interview at http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/interviews/rob_fulop/interview_rob_fulop.html

Thanks to Marco ‘Exile’ Das, it was been confirmed as being preserved at Retrocollector.org , and so thanks to Marco, we’ve added a download here too (which requires Q-Link to run).

Case closed!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 4 Comments

McMurphy’s Mansion

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

A surprise finding thanks to the guys at Genesis Project (in particular Hedning, Six and Whisper), which is a very obscure text adventure game that was written in 1984 for Martin-Art.

Previously the game was only known to exist for MS-DOS, but was ported from the C64, which was released originally around 1984-1985 (the copy protection was dated 1985 according to Hedning/GP). The C64 version was found in 2022 on a set of American disks from New York.

The PC version however was released later around 1987, and then again in 1989. The MS-DOS version was sold as shareware, but the C64 disk was copy protected – suggesting it was sold and not given away in the same way.

We were not 100% certain that the C64 version was properly released, but contributor Gareth Pitchford located an advert for the game that confirmed it was being sold and found many adverts in the US press at the time. We’ve added two to the gallery.

Basically, the game was released as “New” via a company called Ultrabyte, who were doing the advertising. Earliest spot is July 1985 in the likes of Compute!’s Gazette, RUN and Ahoy! From research by Gareth Pitchford, Ultrabyte was ran by a Carl Allan Kukkonen.

Within the downloads, you can find also a map, full documentation and a solution to the game. This is a great finding overall, and yet another C64 game preserved thanks to Genesis Project.

So, a game that was released in limited numbers, not unreleased but finally preserved!

A huge thank you to Gareth Pitchford for all of his additional research into finding out the release details for us to add to the page, which has saved us a lot of research work.

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 1 Comment

PlayWriter series

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

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!

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Harold V1

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

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.

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Silvia

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

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.

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Shadow of the Beast V1

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

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.

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Tetrix

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

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?

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LOGO-Logic 1 and 2

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking
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.
Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Formule 1

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

A very short entry to highlight a currently missing title which may or may not have been released.

A racing game by Loriciels, was it completed or released? Can you help us find and preserve the title?

UPDATE: Confirmed thanks to Martin/Stadium 64 as released and present at https://retrocollector.org/index.php?page=1&system=1&media=123456789AZ&publisher=-1&title=f1&box=-1&region=-1&type=0123&release=14897&img=52613

The game is also in Gamebase at http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=21305&d=18&h=0

So very early on, its a case closed!

With thanks to Bertrand / Atari Frog from http://www.atarimania.com for flagging up.

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 4 Comments