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.

Latest News and Posts

Samhain

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

2000 Trecision

Platform: PC

Gaming historian Damiano Gerli of The Genesis Temple in August 2021 produced a wonderful 3 part article on the history of Italian video game developer Trecision, which we highly recommend checking out if you haven’t already at https://genesistemple.com/the-history-of-trecision-software-part-i-let-the-games-do-the-talking

Within the 3rd part of the article, Damiano talks about a cancelled title named Samhain, which was in development around 2000 by the company. An in-house title that was being put together by a small team within Trecision, consisting of Federico Fasce, Marco Castrucci, Alessandro Giusti, Stefano Mariani and Tommaso Bennati.

screenshots Cripta03

Federico Fasce informed Damiano that the team had come to him with a FPS prototype that featured a “terrific gothic mood”. They had even taken pictures of graves from Rapallo’s cemetery at night time for textures. Federico felt though it should be more of a survival horror type game, than an actual first person shooter. Continue reading →

Posted in: PC, Reviews | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Hardcore

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

1994 Digital Illusions / Psygnosis

Platforms: Commodore Amiga and SEGA MegaDrive

Recently we reported on a lost SEGA MegaDrive conversion of Benefactor, which the press had wrongly attributed screenshots from another game called Hardcore.

Hardcore itself was a fantastic looking Turrican/Assassin clone developed by Digital Illusions, and was due for release on the SEGA MegaDrive. Sadly Psygnosis would pull the plug on all their 16-bit developments before the game would get a chance to be released.

In later years, thankfully the game would see release on the Mega SG as Ultracore. You can read more about this release and see the game in action thanks to Beyond The Scanline’s excellent review.

Amiganoid v2 001

Though what of the Commodore Amiga version? Well, Hardcore was originally being developed for that platform before it was decided to move all of the work across to the SEGA Megadrive. Various previews were shown in magazines at the time, such as The One and showcasing what was looking like a great action platformer. Continue reading →

Posted in: Amiga CD32, Commodore Amiga, Mega Drive / Genesis, Reviews | Tagged: | 2 Comments

GTW64 September 2021 update

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Another month already, and not entirely sure where the time has gone! A slightly busier update this month, as we have gone through and tidied up some of the pages and removed a load of broken links, as well as adding our usual scan additions and small updates over the past 4 weeks. Hopefully in some way this will provide a highlight of some titles you may not have seen or read about yet.

Undead to be “resurrected”!

undeadlarge

News just in, with Undead to be put into development once more after 31 years since its cancellation. Yet another title that could escape the vaults!

Undead

2 new entries added

History Package, Tetris

109 updates added

Accilatem, Ace In The Hole, Acid House, Ala Software, Alien 8, Alien Syndrome V1, Alternate Reality – Missing parts, Appointment With Fear, Arcade Wizzard, Atic Atac, Atlantian Continue reading →

Posted in: GTW64 news, News | Leave a comment

Retro

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

1991 Core Design

Platforms: Commodore Amiga and Atari ST

Following on from the recent post on Cyber Fight, comes yet another 3D futuristic sports title in the shape of Retro. A title being developed for Core Design by Steve Northcott (programming) and Simon Phipps (artwork).

No doubt with a bit of inspiration from the recent success of Speedball 2, the Core Design duo had come up with a nifty 3D polygon routine and sprite algorithm to come up with a potentially winning formula (or so it seemed!).

retro3

ACE magazine gave a bit of background story to the game, suggesting that teams from all over the Solar System compete in the Retro League. Each game pitting two heavily armed and heavily armoured teams of six players against each other in a no-holds-barred scrap. Continue reading →

Posted in: Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, Reviews | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Chess through the ages

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

1995 Black Legend

Platform: PC, Amiga 1200 and CD32

Chess Through The Ages is an unreleased chess game for Commodore Amiga 1200 and CD32 (possibly even PC – see further on). First kicked off in development around 1993 and eventually was set to be released in 1995 – it was never to be.

ChessScreen3

Heavily inspired by Battle Chess, the game was to feature decent animated chess pieces across a variety of different background styles. Some of the chess pieces look to have featured Star Wars characters too – including R2 D2 (not sure what licencing went on there). Continue reading →

Posted in: Amiga CD32, Commodore Amiga, PC, Reviews | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Turbo Charge

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

1991 System 3

Platform: Commodore Amiga, Atari ST

Once known as Borderline during its early development, Turbo Charge was inspired by the driving section that featured within Vendetta, an earlier game by System 3.

Turbocharge14

The game was released on the Commodore 64 in late 1991 to much acclaim, making up for the terrible conversion of Chase HQ from Ocean. You see, this was very much heavily inspired by Chase HQ, where you had to hunt down criminals across a number of stages. Continue reading →

Posted in: Commodore Amiga, Reviews | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Dennis and Gnasher

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

1994 Alternative Software

Platforms: Commodore Amiga and PC

I wasn’t a huge comic book fan growing up, but I still liked to get the occasional copy of the Beano in the UK, where my favourite part was always Dennis the Menace. Probably because I was a kid who used to get up to all kinds of trouble around the same time.

DennisLarge1

It was news to me then that Alternative Software were planning to release a game based on the character and his dog Gnasher back in 1994, and it was thanks to @mcbpete and @yorecomputer for the heads up. Various magazines including The One, Amiga Power and Amiga Format would preview the game, showcasing a neat isometric style title. Continue reading →

Posted in: Commodore Amiga, PC, Reviews | Tagged: | 13 Comments

Frak!

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

1985 Aardvark Software

Platform: Amstrad CPC

A short entry which is thanks to @nivrig and @ChinnyVision for posting on Twitter a few days ago.

Amstrad Computer User in June 1985 had posted a short news item regarding an Amstrad CPC conversion of the classic Nick Pelling game.

The game had only just recently been converted to the C64 and released by State Soft, which the article refers to and how it suffered from the lower res graphics utilized.

The magazine snippet suggested that the game was due out shortly with up to 256 levels. There would also be a new competition – the “Grand master Frak challenge”, with a first prize of an original Frak illustration, second prize of a cuddly Trogg and third being £25 of software. Continue reading →

Posted in: Amstrad CPC, Reviews | Tagged: | 2 Comments

GTW64 August 2021 update

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

As the summer starts to draw to a close, we preserve an early Hungarian Tetris clone thanks to Csaba Virag. Then we take a look at what seems to be a long lost Commodore 64 conversion of a PET/VIC 20 title, two other Magic-series sets of titles that are at large, a long lost and promising game from Norway and a potential conversion of a late Mikro-Gen title. This along with 16 updates to existing entries, with a few findings and additional details added. Enjoy! Continue reading →

Posted in: GTW64 news | Leave a comment

Bob Harris and the Secret of the Killer Bees

Posted: by Dieter Koenig

Contributor Fabrizio Bartoloni flagged up an old WayBackMachine archive copy of this page which sadly no longer exists in its proper form when the website disappeared in 2009. Fabrizio suggested for us to host a copy of the page, as it features GTWs for early systems such as the Odyssey 2 and the unreleased Odyssey 3. The post is set to the authorship of Dieter Koenig as a result.

Special thanks to Bob Harris for this great game and for answering all of my questions! Thanks to Thomas Becker, who discovered some of the cheat codes “in those days”!

I really don’t know where to start, hmm, I think here: Well, on October 21, 1996 I received a letter from German Thomas Becker, in which he tells me about two cheat codes for the Philips G7000 game “Killer Bees”. One of these key combinations showed the initials of the programmer on the screen, the other allowed to play the game in slow motion, though without counting scores. Continue reading →

Posted in: Features, Magnavox, Magnavox Odyssey 2, Magnavox Odyssey 3 | 1 Comment