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.
Ok, so not quite finished for 2020 yet – I fibbed a bit!
Many of you will have played the wonderful Barbarian 2 by Rob Stevens, and maybe even read the excellent feature with him in FREEZE64 about the game.
Whilst talking to Rob, Vinny Mainolfi of FREEZE64 discovered that Rob was sitting on a complete game that never saw the light of day called Trooper. This was Rob’s first proper C64 development when he was around 17/18 years old and likely what he showed to Palace to get his position at the company and the gig on Barbarian 2.
Rob kindly dug out a copy of the game and sent to Vinny to try and get up and running again and preserve. After several attempts, it finally backed up. Vinny would release the game as part of a special Christmas Eve release to FREEZE64 subscribers. He has also very kindly allowed GTW to release the game a few hours later on the site for non-subscribers, so here it is!
Everything in the game was done by Rob, and you control a robot soldier caught behind enemy lines and trying to escape. There is a huge mothership that chases you, and if it catches up, then you’re dead. So keep moving forward and don’t hand around too long.
For a first development, Trooper is impressive, and its great to see Rob’s work preserved so it can shared with you. We will add more details soon over time about the game and get Rob’s input, but for now check out a wonderful game thanks to the brilliant efforts of Vinny Mainolfi at FREEZE64.
In early 2021, it was discovered that a second copy had sneaked out too and was picked up in December 2020 by a Daniel Ratcliff. Attempts were made to preserve the game by scener Icon, but unfortunately the tape was corrupted. We’ve added new photos and the damaged archive attempt to the download section here for posterity. Dan plans to sell the game sometime in the future.
Our next entry popped up via Twitter in late 2020 thanks to Mark Hardisty, who spotted ex-C64 developer Chris Hester posting up some photos of a game that he worked on.
Ultrabulb seems to be a kind of Spindizzy clone, looking very similar – though having some lovely curved tiles for one the screens. Chris (who previously had created the adventure game Runaway) took the game to Vector Grafix after an interview. Their suggestion was to preload the levels offscreen.
Chris later dug out some notes and sketches relating to the game, which suggests that tiles would have different effects. A tile with an arrow in one direction would prevent you moving in the other for instance, and mystery blocks would either disappear or potentially add to your score. There were potentially boulders to push around on the map, blocks that would disappear and monsters that follow around certain paths.
Monsters would either move around in an X direction, or Y direction – with firefly type enemies inspired by Boulderdash, which would move around a particular path with respect to one side. From one of the pages, it seems the inspirations for the game were from Gauntlet, Boulderdash and Paradroid – as well as Spindizzy (which isn’t mentioned specifically, but we can only assume).
That’s all we know at the moment, but hope to learn more about the game from Chris soon – who will also be providing scans of the photos. The game itself may sadly be lost for good, though Chris does have a few disks knocking about that may have something of it.
By the sounds of it, the game was never finished. It’s early days yet, and this page is a placeholder for now whilst we try and find out more and flesh out the story of the game and hope something of it could be found to recover and show.
Not seemingly based on the famous film series at all, this is a very simple multi-directional scrolling shooter that was being developed back in 1996.
It does have a slight feel of “Empire Strikes Back” from the VCS about it, but that’s only due to the walker-like enemies that you have to shoot and destroy. Your main ship bounces around like mad and has some strange bouncy bullets that shoot out. There are also what seem to be samples for the shots.
There’s nothing much else to it at this stage – again like with many previews in GTW, its more of a technical demo than a game. With a developer name in the credits known, it is hoped that some day we will find out more about the title and what the plans were.
A quick entry, as there isn’t really that much to say about our next title.
It’s called Star Fighter – there’s a start, and its meant to be a sideways scrolling shooter by the looks of it – but its so early in development, you just have the HUD, some slow scrolling stars an a ship that glitches a fair bit.
That’s pretty much it – released in 1987 and seems to be a very early abandoned project by The Sarge, so we hope to try and find out more about it soon and what the plans were.
Squost is a well polished and decent looking tile sliding puzzler, where you have a picture that is jumbled up and have to slide the tiles back to make the proper picture.
Although it has been done to death and doesn’t offer anything new here, the game looks brilliant, with some wonderful and vibrant colours throughout. The game was developed by a team that called themselves the Bananas Without Brains, which we’re not sure if it was a fun dig/reference at the Boys Without Brains.
There is no sound at this stage, but the game engine seems to be there and complete – maybe just lacking some more levels. So what happened to it? Unfortunately we have no idea at this stage – it is likely that no-one picked up the game to publish, and so it was left on the scrap heap. Hopefully we’ll get hold of the developer at some point to confirm.
Squirm 2 is the unofficial sequel to the ancient Mastertronic game released around 1984, being developed around 2015 by Mark Ross.
The game is slightly more advance compared to the original title, with a bit of a feel of Spore about it along with the original Squirm. Basically, you must collect all of the eggs on the screen to progress to the next level.
In the preview, it seems to just be the 1 level at this stage and no sound at all.
Overall it has plenty of promise, but sadly there have been no further updates and it seems the game has completely stalled. Hopefully Mark will come back to it some day so we can see it completed.
Side scrolling shooters are a popular genre on the C64, and Squad Force Five is adding to the proof of that. A game that was in development around 2011.
The HUD, sprites and attack waves all look pretty good – though at this stage there seems to be no backgrounds or anything like that, which feels a bit odd.
It’s playable to the point that you can shoot enemies, but its still very much early days for the game.
The question is whether the game ever got any further than this demo, or if that was it. Hopefully someone will be able to shed some light.
Space Ball is a simple but neat puzzler game, slightly similar to Sensitive in some ways – where you bounce on a set of tiles. As you move though, holes appear around you rather than behind/under you and you have to keep moving whilst avoiding the holes to build up a score.
There’s not too much to it so far, but its actually quite fun to play at this early stage. Unfortunately it was long abandoned back in 1995 it seems with no further updates.
Did it get any further than this? We don’t know at this stage, but hope that some day we’ll find the developers to learn more about the title.
The Sixth Sense doesn’t seem to be anything to do with the film that appeared a few years later, but is a neat looking Dungeon Master style game from 1993 with a cool blue effect throughout.
You can currently wander around the map and go through a few doors by the looks of it, but not much else at this stage. We’re not sure if this early preview is all that ever was made of the game, or if there is more to potentially find in the future.
Programmer and artist details are unknown, though the musicians are known – so its hoped that they might be able to shed some light on this game and who it was being produced by.
Rip Off is a very simple single screen shooter that feels more of a technical demo than an actual game at this stage.
There’s a simple ship at the bottom, and just a standard attack wave that swoops in and out, which you cannot seem to shoot properly. Efforts seem to have gone into the weapons, but the game isn’t playable at the moment.
Released back in 1996, there has been no further update to the preview – suggesting that this game has been long abandoned.
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.
Games That Weren't® is the registered trademark of Frank Gasking.
