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.
It’s been a while since we added some VIC-20 games to the archive, so here we are, with some quick entries to bolster up the slowly growing archive. This week we have added the following:
A short entry until we can confirm that there was indeed a Commodore VIC-20 conversion.
Alien Garden was a computer generated art game, where you control an embryonic life-form that you must try and help survive and reproduce across 20 generations through trial and error.
A very early game that was released by Epyx on the Atari 400/800 in 1982, some sites suggest that a VIC-20 edition was available or planned – but there is very little detail at present.
Has it therefore just been incorrectly attributed as a platform?
With thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni and Ward F. Shrake.
A short entry for yet another Commodore Vic-20 title that was reported on the Vic-20 Cartridge Rarity list and may well be unreleased, or otherwise saw a very limited release.
Necromancer was a popular C64 game released by Synapse, but a Vic 20 version was mentioned in an advert in December 1983 of Compute! Gazette in the US. Was it a printing mistake, and did they mean the C64? Or did a Vic-20 conversion really exist?
The game of course was released on the likes of the Atari 400/800 and Commodore 64, so its possible (as Avram suggests in the comments) that Bill Williams will know more of the Vic 20 conversion.
If you know anything more, please let us know.
With thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni and Avram Dumitrescu.
An intriguing lost First Star Software game for the Commodore VIC-20, which did see a previously unreleased Commodore 64 edition saved some years ago.
The game was flagged up on Ward F. Shrake’s VIC 20 list as vapourware, and was reviewed in Compute! magazine in May 1984 along with the TRS-80 Color edition.
There is oddly no mention of a Commodore 64 conversion, so we wondered if there was a printing error in the magazine and if they meant to say Commodore 64 instead. Well, thanks to contributor Larry Cameron, it has been found that it isn’t vapourware at all.
An ebay auction with an 1983 advert, shows the game being advertised for both TRS-80 and the VIC-20. What’s even better is that the VIC-20 edition lists a coding credit to a Wayne Lam. We’ve added a photo from the auction of the advert below.
So what happened to the game, and could anything be found of the VIC-20 edition? Hopefully we’ll find Wayne at some point to learn more and see if anything may still exist after all this time.
With thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni, Ward F. Shrake and Larry Cameron.
A short entry for yet another Commodore VIC-20 title that was reported on the Vic-20 Cartridge Rarity list and may well be unreleased, or otherwise saw a very limited release.
We’re not sure exactly what the game was about, but it was listed in an advert in December 1983 of Compute! Gazette. With a bit of digging, it wasn’t long until we found a name in connection with the game.
The developer was Lawrence Holland, and it was their first ever development before working on games such as Star Wars: X-Wing and more. We hope to find out more from Lawrence soon about the title.
The game was also later renamed to Super Storm and was released on the Atari platforms, which apparently was also not released on the TI-99/4A, though a prototype has been since found.
It seems to suggest that this game may well have been released, but in limited numbers. We will update the page as soon as we learn anything more. If you know anything more, please let us know.
With thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni and Ward F. Shrake.
A very short post to highlight some unreleased Magnavox Odyssey 2 unreleased games and prototypes flagged up by Fabrizio Bartoloni:
If you haven’t seen these before, then worth checking out – especially the detailed piece on Tutankham.
With thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni.
I say “welcome”, but Fabrizio is already a very well known face to Games That Weren’t, and has been for many years now.
When looking at our team page and doing some tidy-ups, I realised that we have a number of regular contributors who should be recognised better for all their help. Fabrizio is the first, and one of the most prolific contributors our project has had.
Fabrizio loves all things to do with unreleased games, and has a very keen eye for any new items that surface via other sites and forums. If you check many pages within the archive, you’ll no doubt spot Fabrizio’s name credited somewhere.
Thanks Fabrizio for all your help over the years, and for also becoming part of the GTW family.
A short entry to highlight a series of previously unreleased VIC 20 games from Ghislain de Blois that you may have missed and was posted originally in 2015:
Eight previously unreleased games for the VIC-20: THE SYSTEM IIII GAME CATALOG 1986-1990
There is a wide variety of games to check out, including a Pac-man clone, boxing games and a RPG title – all showcasing the early talents of Ghislain before he went on to produce stunners such as Realms of Quest.
Enjoy!
With thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni for flagging up and highlighting.
Drop Soldier was a RPG that put you in the shoes of a 1st rank soldier, where you are set a number of night and day missions.
You could do missions by yourself or command a platoon and issue orders, plan attacks. One of the exciting aspects was where CU Amiga talked about being able to connect up to 16 Amigas together via modem or RS232 to play as a team.
The missions would range from destroying various enemy bases, to delivering objects to certain locations. The drop soldiers themselves would be equipped with power suits to enable them to jump and run much faster than standard soldiers. Continue reading
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