Games That Weren't^®

A short entry which has been highlighted as a possibility thanks to Richard Bayliss. 3D Starfighter was an Oliver Twins game for Codemasters that was released on the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC platforms back in 1988.

It’s always been interesting, as most games that were released by Codemasters always had a C64 version in the pipeline. We wonder therefore if 3D Starfighter was yet another title which they tried to get a conversion produced.

There certainly seems as of yet to be no evidence that a conversion was started, but based on the track record of unreleased games within the archive for the company, we think there is a very strong chance something was in the plans at least.

If you know anything more about a potential conversion, please do contact us!

A combined entry to try and find and recover a set of homebrew 3D Construction Kit games that were due for release on the Commodore 64 back around 1993.

The games are as follows (one which we already have an entry for in GTW):

• Eskape – by Steven Flanagan
• Racer Routine – by Steven Flanagan
• Doctor Wow Pt1 – by David Lacey
• Doctor Wow Pt2 – by David Lacey

If you know anything about these currently lost titles, please let us know – as it would be great to see them saved from obscurity.

I’m a huge Dizzy fan, so to hear of any unreleased works by The Oliver Twins is always quite exciting. Thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni, the following game was brought to my attention.

Excalibur was to be a top down adventure game, heavily inspired by titles such as Gauntlet. Here is what the Oliver Twins had to say about it on their webpage:

“We designed and started coding a very ambitious game called Excalibur inspired by Atari’s Gauntlet, but this was more of a top-down adventure game where the player had to explore and find treasures in a mediaeval world. We pitched the idea to Firebird and they agreed to £10,000 for three versions – Amstrad, Spectrum and Commodore 64. Given their past performance we weren’t prepared to continue until a contract turned up and so decided to pitch a new game to other publishers at ECTS in the first week of September ‘86 in London.”

The game was based on the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round table, and with levels procedurally generated (inspired by The Sentinel) in a Gauntlet-like fashion, with additional inspirations from a Dragon 32 text-based game called Quest.

The game was one or two player, where you acted a a knight travelling around the ancient Kingdom of Camelot in search of Excalibur.  With the procedurally generated map, the landscape was massive – with forests, clearings, roads, rivers and bridges with small hamlets (as well as villages and castles).

When players approached settlements, the names were procedurally generated too – inspired this time by Elite and its planet naming system. You could find and loot treasure along the way, where you could also hold different weapons and items to help battle enemies within your path.

As far a development goes, work was carried out at first on the Amstrad CPC in mid-1986, and by August they pitched a demo to Firebird, who signed up the game for the Amstrad, Spectrum and C64.

However, things sadly fell through (for reasons as of yet unknown), with just the Amstrad version ever started at around a half complete status. No Spectrum or C64 version had yet been started to our knowledge.

A huge shame that there is likely nothing to see here, but hopefully some day at least we’ll get to see the Amstrad edition.

A short entry to what could be a complete series of extensions for Whole Brain Spelling by Sublogic that were actually released.

Just recently in November 2021, Allan Pinkerton helped to preserve the Whole Brain Spelling – General Word List package. However, the following word list supplements are currently missing:

• A CHILD’S GARDEN OF WORDS
• FAIRY TALE WORD LIST
• MEDICAL WORD LIST
• SCIENTIFIC WORD LIST
• BUSINESS WORD LIST

As we say – they could well have been released, but just in limited numbers. However, they are unpreserved and as well as unreleased games, we try and help find those which are just yet to be preserved too.

If you can help us preserve these word lists, please let us know!

Our next entry into the archive come thanks to Gareth Pitchford, who flagged up this currently missing text adventure game by Graham R. Webber.

The game was actually published by Satchel, who were a software arm of Angle Park Computing Centre in South Australia. It was written first for the C64, then converted to the Amstrad CPC (currently preserved) by David A. Simpson.

It is likely the C64 version was released, but it is yet to be preserved – so we add this entry to help put out a search for it.

EDIT (06/12/2021) – Contributor Rio Baan from Gamebase64 has confirmed that they have recovered the game and it will be appearing in Gamebase v18.  Case closed!

Our next entry into the archive come thanks to Gareth Pitchford, who flagged up this currently missing homebrew text adventure game by Derek Doran.

The game was advertised in Commodore User magazine back in 1986, but although their game Prime Suspect is preserved, this particular title is currently at large.

We’re not sure at this stage what the story was behind the game, the only possible detail suggested by Gareth is that Core could be the same game as Gape, which we’ve also added to the archive.

It is believed that the game could have been constructed using either Quill or Graphic Adventure Creator and was sold from home by Derek.

Did you happen to purchase a copy and can you help us preserve the title?