Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
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.
Thanks to LiqMatrix for his preservation work, we have uploaded a 1996 PC Shareware compilation onto Archive.org called Best of MVP Software. Most games likely archived, but could be a few not out there. CD itself wasn’t preserved.
https://archive.org/details/best-of-mvp-software-games-cd-media
Our next entry into the GTW archives is a very early Game Boy Color title called MBC that was being created by a developer/artist called Nick London in 1999, before his days of working on Star Wars and Need for Speed games.
MBC (not sure what it currently stands for!) is a simple platform shooter, sort of like a miniature version of Rolling Thunder, where you have a fun that fires rapidly and needs to be replenished by pressing down on small ammo panels. There is an enemy that paces back and forth, but you cannot harm them in this demo. Continue reading
Countdown was an adventure game consisting of digitized characters and with synthesized speech, eventually released in 1991 for MS-DOS. According to the PC version’s review in The One magazine (February 1991) – Amiga and Atari ST versions were due in autumn of that year.
Sadly, it was never to be and apart from the mention in The One magazine, there has been no further details about either of the conversions. The question is whether they were ever started and if so, how far did they get? Continue reading
More Game Boy prototypes added to the Games That Weren’t archives, with a set of Tip Off ones for the Nintendo Game Boy. However, there are also an interesting set of early Game Boy Color versions that we have also included. More on that a bit later.
The Game Boy prototypes date from the 10th November 1992 to 22nd February 1994. There is a build that had a timestamp of 22-10-99, but we think this was just from a backup, the same as with another from 2021. Continue reading
Following on from the discovery of an early PC demo of X’Treme Roller, we now have a set of five prototypes for the Sony PlayStation (PS1) showing very early test builds of the game before it became X’Treme Roller and the game was likely being pitched around to publishers by Neko.
At one stage, it seems DC Studios were working with Neko with a view to using the engine or to get interest to do a joint project.
The prototypes are dated from the 17th July to the 7th August 2000, with the earlier builds containing a test sea-side route, with ramps, hills and buildings. The main character starts off very slow as they drop onto the course, and then you can kick off to move around. Continue reading
Recently had the pleasure of chatting with the lovely Wayne Goodchild at eneba.com about retro games, preservation, and current developments (beyond just Games That Weren’t). You can check it out here:
Next into the Games That Weren’t archives is a very rare and early PC demo of X’Treme Roller by Neko, before the name had been decided and when the engine was being put together. The game was eventually released by Microids in 2001, but only on the Sony PlayStation 1 platform.
An unreleased N64 version was released by Forest of Illusion back in 2021, though nothing of a PC edition has been known about until now. It seems that the PC version was scrapped, along with the N64 edition. Continue reading
Today we’re adding three very early Kick Off 3: European Challenge prototype builds for the SEGA Mega Drive, which are not playable and just showcase part of the main game graphics and unused menus and graphics that never made the final cut.
These are dated from around February 1994, and long before the final release. The main logo is completely different and the menus also have completely different graphics. Continue reading
Fulltime Soccer is an interesting budget football title that was eventually released by Datel Electronics for the Color Gameboy. It got a very limited release and can be hard to find. But these prototypes recently recovered, reveal that the game was seemingly built over the top of Super Kick Off.
There are two builds in total, plus a 3rd unknown prototype by the same developer which may not be related. The first build from 23-08-00 is titled “Football Crazy, Football Mad” with some temporary titles and a digitized picture not found in the final game. Continue reading
Next up to be added to the Games That Weren’t archives is a car engine prototype by Tuna Technologies, which was created in 1999 and added to into 2000. This impressive racing engine was pitched around to various places in the hope that it would get picked up.
You may notice the rather striking similarity to VRally on the Game Boy Color – which is because the graphics were temporarily ripped and used for the engine demo being produced. The aim was to produce an engine which was much faster and had more features than the VRally version to then ship around.
In the end, Electronic Arts would get the team to use it to produce Road Rash on the platform. And you can see why – the engine is quite cool, especially the early 2000 build which features a car that you can control with the road. The routine is extremely fast, and feels a little like the Lotus Turbo Challenge road routine on the Commodore Amiga. Continue reading
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.
