Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
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.
Our next entry into the GTW64 archives is a title that was recovered by Csaba Virag in early 2022. This is an early Hungarian puzzler that was created by Emix Software, who had very limited copies of their games made at home.
The title is very simple, and the aim is to try and move boxes into spaces on the grid. However, your cursor/person that moves the boxes is invincible and you have to try and figure out where you are roughly by moving around and hoping you move a box.
I’ve listed this as a preview, as its quite rough around the edges and lacks some polish (plus there only seems to be around 8 levels). It could be that this was the final version of the game though, but we’ll update if we learn more in the future.
Thanks to Csaba you can now check out yet more Hungarian C64 history now preserved.
A quick entry into GTW64 archives that was recovered by Csaba Virag in early 2022. This is a simple SEUCK effort that was to be sold commercially in Hungary back in the late 1980s by Emix Software, who had very limited copies of their games made at home.
As SEUCK games go, this isn’t very polished at all and isn’t one of the better titles seen created in the package. It comes with an intro screen and tune and of course, it doesn’t seem to have been preserved until now.
This may well have actually been sold, but just in very limited numbers. Hopefully we will get confirmation of this at some point soon.
A new GTW finding thanks to the preservation efforts of GTW regular Csaba Virag. This is an obscure German game which was created in 1986 by Michael Wuest, is the same developer who went on to code AmigaFox (an Amiga conversion of Printfox).
It is quite a simple game overall, with some ripped Rob Hubbard music, and what just seems to be the simple aim of shooting items on a conveyor belt. It seems that if you hit the wrong items, then it is game over.
Michael kindly got in touch via the comments to confirm that the game was not done for commercial reasons, but was done for a friend called März (which is March in English). Michael has no idea how the game came to sneak out into the wild.
He also did a bunch of releases like AmigaFox, GE (Versions 1-5), some Automation stuff (AlertWerks 3000) and some other things. But Maerz 1-3 have never been made official – though we hope we may see 1 and 3 in the future.
Brainway is a simple puzzler, very similar to titles such as Sensitive, but where you must destroy all the tiles with purple circles on and without getting stuck or falling.
It’s a nice twist on games like Sensitive, and was actually due for release by Genias in 1990.
For reasons unknown, it was abandoned, even though it was fully completed. We hope to speak to the developers in the future to find out exactly what happened.
Thankfully, the game was saved and released by Hokuto Force in 2018 – so go and check it out for yourself.
Ball-Job (great name!) is a simple, but well polished puzzler where you have to copy the pattern on the right window by expanding balls to match.
When you place balls next to another, it causes expansion of those around – so this is where the logical element comes into play.
Thanks to contributor Jan Schulze, its been highlighted that this game is a clone of Toyballs, which was done by a different team. Was this perhaps some kind of unofficial sequel?
It is yet another title that we are not sure about its release status, with suggestions again that it was due for release via CP Verlag. Do you know anything more about it?
You may recognise the title and the main character from the Amiga game by Core Design, though this is nothing like the zooming and bouncing original.
What we have here is much closer to Sensitive, and where you must destroy all the destroyable titles without falling or getting trapped.
It’s a nice game, but one we are not sure ever got a proper release or not. There seems to be suggestions that the game was due to be released by CP Verlag at one stage. Do you know anything more about it?
Now, you may recognize our next entry, and that is because it is the original title that eventually evolved into Gravitrix that was released by RGCD and Psytronik: https://psytronik.bigcartel.com/product/gravitrix-c64
This is the early 1993 incarnation that was being developed for CP Verlag, but was rejected due to them having too many puzzle games at the time (this was listed in the scroll text in the download – thanks to Professor Chaos for flagging this up).
Additionally, Professor Chaos has informed us that the preview here uses 7 demo songs from “Advanced Music Programmer”, a music editor which was published by CP Verlag on Magic Disk 64 12/91.
Also, when the game was cancelled, it was converted to DOS in 1994/1995 and named “Brainstorm Pro”. The levels in that game pretty much match what are in the preview here, though the DOS version has 50 more levels and 8 custom AdLib tunes.
It also features quite different presentation, and is overall a nice early glimpse at a title that thankfully would be eventually finished and surface years later. A game that wasn’t, but eventually was under a different guise – so case closed already!
Our next entry is quite a nice and polished fighting game from 1987, featuring some ripped Rob Hubbard music for good measure.
You can kick enemies, or shoot them with a gun or bazooka, or throw grenades at them. There doesn’t seem to be too much to do apart from that and go between two floors at present. It is a nice show case of a game that had some potential.
We don’t believe that it got much further than this, but hope to learn more soon and find out what the plans were for the game. Did any publishers consider it at all?
A neat early run and jump game, which oddly reminds me of William Wobbler. This may have been released in Italy in some shape or form, but most sources suggest that it wasn’t officially released.
It seems to be complete overall, so we have a feeling it was. Not much else to say at this stage, but to check out the game if you haven’t seen it before.
If you know anything more about this title and its release status, please do get in touch.
Sadly our next entry is for a game that wasn’t abandoned many years ago, but was only abandoned around a year ago. A recent and new development during an exciting time for C64 users.
Top-Hole Golf was being produced by Matthew Clarke, and was a really nice Leaderboard style game. It seems it was in development for a few years, and the developer had a Gitlab page up for the game with all the source code.
The developer decided that they didn’t want to do any C64 development any more or any other type of development, classing his game as abandonware. It is really sad to hear this, and a shame that someone of Matthew’s talent has decided to call it a day in general. Hopefully he may reconsider some day after a break.
Thanks to the anonymous contributor who flagged up the manual, which we have added here. We have also added the source archive which was flagged up to us by Zzarko, Dan and LiqMatrix after a 1.6 release was made in March 2022.
For now, check out what was a nice and exciting golf game – sadly now never to be.
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