Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
We are an 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.
Many of you may fondly remember the wonderful puzzler Benefactor from Psygnosis back in 1994 for the Commodore Amiga, with its tiny main character that would have parallels with titles such as Lemmings and Load Runner.
The success of the title makes it no surprise that a SEGA Mega Drive conversion was in the works back in 1994, but what may have surprised you is just how that conversion was apparently shaping up:
Often there is a sad story behind most unreleased games, and this 2009 homebrew development of Q*Bert for the Vic 20 is certainly one of them. A very promising development that was first announced on the Sleeping Elephant forums by a chap called Brighty.
The aim was to try and vastly improve on what was felt to be an underwhelming conversion by Parker Bros and get something much closer to the arcade classic.
Brighty seemingly was getting very close to that, and apart from almost losing his development work on a faulty flash drive, it was around 90% complete when Brighty went underground. In 2014, he started to sell off his Vic 20 collection to make some money and sadly hasn’t been seen around since.
Forum member Saehn (also known as Shane Fell) had been helping with graphics at the time, but tragically was in a car accident in 2011 and is still registered as a missing person to this day. It is still hoped that Shane will be found some day.
It is hoped that Brighty will see this post in the future and will get in touch to shed some light on what happened overall. For now, here is a preview of the game (requires RAM expansion) for you to check out and see the promise for yourself:
Commodore had released many clones of arcade games on the Vic 20, and this was to be no different. A clone of Phoenix, but one which was never to be.
It is believed to have been developed by Andy Finkel, and rumoured that Atari stepped in and stopped Commodore before they could release it, much as Namco did with Jelly Monsters. In the case of Space Vultures though, it never made it out of the door.
Was anything ever started? Andy couldn’t recall much at all about the game or what it was going to be. It suggests the possibility that it never got too far before its cancellation.
Interestingly, a label number was given as VIC-1936 and it was listed in an advert as a text listing (I am sure of this – but cannot find the scan to clarify). It is hoped that Andy may find something of the game in his notes to shed more light, but any hopes of finding something playable could be dashed.
Credits: GarryG.
Jack Attack as a game title for the Commodore 64 (and C16/Plus 4) was a well known dig at Jack Tramiel and his so called “Jack Attacks” that he used to give out to his staff. The red main character sort of looking familiar to the Commodore boss at the time, or so we thought. But did you know that the game had originally been produced back in 1982 by Kevin Kieller and John Traynor, and was originally a 4K cartridge game written for the Commodore Vic 20? Cubic Critters was the game, and Commodore absolutely loved it. Continue reading
Mutant Speed Demons was to be yet another title the Mutant League series on the SEGA Mega Drive, following on from the likes of Mutant League Football and Mutant League Hockey and created by New Wave Graphics.
Over the years, little has been known about the title apart from a few very brief press clippings about the game. Gamepro magazine described the title as a “rip-roaring motorcycle” game, but that was about it. The game subsequently disappeared without a trace and no more was heard about it.
In 2009, something of the game was almost found – when a prototype was unearthed. Tragically the game had long been wiped after the batteries were found to have failed that were keeping the game alive. Then in 2013, a detailed 100-200 page manuscript surfaced in an online auction, but has yet to have been digitally preserved and made available.
Then in February 2021, @IsaiahVinson1 got in touch with Games That Weren’t to flag up some assets that were found on an older version of Mike Kennedy’s website. Mike was one of the artists working on the game at the time and had once showcased some of the art he had produced. The sprites give a great glimpse of roughly how the game was going to look and feel – showing a racing/beat-em-up game in the style of Road Rash. As Mutant League Football was reportedly built upon the Madden 93 engine (though Michael Mendheim has said it wasn’t), we felt there was a strong chance that this game was built upon the Road Rash engine.
This came as a bit of a shock when Chris Poacher first highlighted on the Vic 20 Facebook group that Melbourne House had advertised a Vic 20 version of Hungry Horace in Personal Computer Weekly back in 1983.
Sure enough, within the set of small inlay covers advertising the different Horace games, there is a green + yellow variation of the cover advertising a Vic 20 edition. Just underneath the platform, it suggests that the game needed an 8K memory expansion.
Oddly though, although the cover is shown – on the order form there is no option to actually pick the Vic 20 version. So was this a mistake, and had Melbourne House decided early on to drop the title?
It would be amazing if a conversion was found to have been started, and we will try to get in touch with a few ex-Melbourne House developers to see if they know anything about it. Chances of finding something are slim, but who knows!
198? Parker Bros
Is this a vapourware title, or was something feasibly started of this Q-Bert sequel on the Vic?
The game’s manual for the Atari platform all but confirms that “Commodore” was due a conversion, but was it Vic 20 as well as Commodore 64?
Well, the Commodore 64 version was actually confirmed and found in its final state a few years ago. So it could be that it was just a C64 version that was ever planned.
Hopefully some day someone will step forward with more information, either confirming or denying such a conversion existed.
By 1998, things were looking extremely bleak for the Amiga platform, but there were people still trying to keep the dream alive. None more so than Black Flag and Vulcan Software with the development of Caveman Species. A version was also in development for PC too.
Following the success of Starwing, Argonaut sought to find a new title to utilize the Super FX chip once more and prove that the SNES still had plenty of life in it yet against the newcomers of the Sony PlayStation and SEGA Saturn.
Super Play magazine reported in 1994 that Argonaut had signed the Transformers licence, and this was to be their next big title on the platform. It was felt that producing large scale robots would work perfectly with the Super FX chip and something special could certainly be created. Continue reading
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