Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
Welcome to Games That Weren't!
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.
A surprise discovery when browsing the Gamebase 64 archive, with a simple but neat shooter by Mikael Tillander, the creator of Knight n Grail.
This was a very early development by him, which has some lovely animations and has you scrolling downwards and shooting insects. It almost feels like a reverse scrolling SEUCK game, which is made more so by the sound effects which seem to have been lifted from the engine.
There isn’t too much to the game at this stage, with a number of attack waves until you reach the bottom of the screen and fight a large fly-type creature. Very promising though and a shame it didn’t get much further than this.
Hopefully Mikael will shed some more light on the development in the near future.
An interesting conversion of the ZX Spectrum version of Melbourne House’s Penetrator, which did actually see a C64 conversion back in the day. However, many feel that the ZX Spectrum edition was far superior, so it is interesting to see a conversion of that edition.
Although it seems to be mostly there, its lacking sound or any of the level editor features. It seems almost like a direct line-by-line conversion and runs quite slowly too.
Its possible that this was a proof of concept which was abandoned, possibly because of the speed issues. Nothing seems to have been done to it since 2011, therefore its gone into the GTW archives.
Hopefully we’ll learn more about it soon to share here.
All I can say is that this game looks really cool and reminds me of a PC strategy game that an old work colleague used to play and had a similar vector feel to it.
Unfortunately I have no idea what you’re meant to do or how playable it is. Anyone who knows more, please feel free to get in touch and i’ll update the page with a bit more detail and with a credit to yourself.
It has a nice feel about it overall, so it is a shame to see that it seems to be yet another abandoned title. Did it get any further? Who was it planned for?
A promising early sideways scrolling shooter by Paul Green that I remember well from the screenshots put online and because my friend Jason Kelk was doing some graphic work for it too, along with Andy Vaisey.
After over 10 years since the development, it seems to have completely stalled and been abandoned by Paul – which is a shame, as it looks pretty decent overall.
This seems to be as far as it ever got, though its likely that more level maps/graphics were produced and just not used. We have just added some raw files from Andy and a diary from Paul about the game, though hopefully Paul will shed some light on the development some day, or even come back to it given how popular it is writing C64 games again at the moment. We’ll see.
A short entry for a title possibly inspired by Super Smash Bros? This is a very early development that features Mario and Megaman that move around quite nicely, but that is about it at the moment.
A very early proof of concept which seems to have been abandoned very early on. A shame, as this could have been interesting to see it progress and how far it could have been taken.
If you know anything more about the development, please get in touch.
Feels like yesterday that I put up a webpage on this game, promoting it as “coming soon”. In the days when I was doing C64 news as well as GTW as a side stream site.
Now over 19 years on (gulp!), it’s probably time to finally put the game into the GTW archive. Probably safe to say that this one isn’t going to be finished any time soon.
It is a simple but interesting take on Pacman, where you have two players simultaneously racing to complete a maze. A nice idea in theory, though the maze feels too small and cramped, and could do with some sort of scrolling view to really work.
Maybe that is why it was abandoned in the end, we’re not too sure. My recollection is that the game was to be re-done from scratch, but I can’t seem to find any record of that story (I might be making it up!)
If you know anything more about the development, please get in touch.
An interesting early preview of a cute Creatures style beat-em-up, or at least I think it is.
It’s a bit unclear what you’re meant to do, but it seems to be a 2-player game where you have to attack your opponent. There are some creatures of a smaller size wandering about (one with an arrow above its head), which I guess you would pick up and throw or something like that. So maybe it was a sort of Bounces clone or inspired game?
Abandoned way back in 1991, it is likely that this was as far as it ever got and this was released to the world as a result.
What the exact plans were for it and why it was cancelled was unknown. With a full credits list, it was hoped that we’d get to learn some day about what happened.
Well, in September 2023 – artist Raymond Zachariasse got in touch to confirm that development was stopped as the team decided to create other projects instead. Mainly though it was down to technical difficulties, and that they wanted to produce something much more than the C64 was capable of.
As a result – this seems to be as far as the game ever got, which is a shame – but we think now a case closed!
A very short entry for a licence that would never actually get used in the end.
Elite Software were pretty on the ball along with Ocean Software back in the day, getting hold of high profile licences such as Airwolf and Rambo. Whilst talking about another unreleased version of a licensed game (Dukes of Hazzard V1), Chris Harvey mentioned that Elite had obtained the rights to the sequel to the 1984 Romancing the Stone film, called The Jewel of the Nile.
Although a popular series of films, Chris and Neil A. Bate went to see the film premiere in Leicester Square and rang Steve Wilcox to let them know that the movie was “ungameable”. Unfortunately though the deal had already been done.
Usually, Elite were pretty good at making full use of a licence (one of the abandoned Thundercats games becoming Bombjack 2 for instance), so its surprising that they didn’t do the same with Jewel of the Nile. Don’t forget, Airwolf 1 (and 2 in particular!) were not really faithful at all to the TV series, so it perhaps wouldn’t have been surprising if the licence had been applied to something else they had going at the time.
It is currently unknown if the licence was quietly dropped, or if it was given to someone else to have a go at. It seems it died a death pretty quickly and never got a mention in the press as part of Elite’s plans at the time.
When first getting in touch with Chris Harvey about another long lost C64 game, the first thing he responded was that he could have sworn I was about to ask about Dukes of Hazzard.
Not a particularly wide spread release or well regarded game on the C64, maybe Chris didn’t realise the game had infact been released after all. He was shocked, and had no idea where this had come from at all. However, this wasn’t Chris’ prototype, and their game was very different indeed.
Asking a bit more about the prototype, Chris revealed that it was written before they had started on Airwolf and was being worked on with Rory Green. The released version according to Chris, looked like a version that Neil A Bate was working on before he had got to Elite. Chris couldn’t recall much apart from that the game had a mechanic where you threw “bombs” (or sticks of dynamite) that exploded and caused ramps to be generated from the craters. This is how you “jumped” in the game.
The game was cancelled due to Airwolf becoming an unexpected big hit and requiring more attention to complete. Dukes of Hazzard got caught up in a mad scramble for a big movie licence (Jewel of the Nile) – which is another story for another day.
When asked if anything may have survived, Chris believes that everything would have been overwritten with Airwolf code when they started that project. Especially as there was no backup HDDs or USB sticks back then! Surely there were some new floppies they could have used?
A game that has been knocking about a bit in the archives, by the creator of another title in the GTW vaults called Bimz.
This title compared to the Bjarke’s previous game is a lot more ambitious, with a flick screen arcade adventure theme, similar in some ways to Joe Blade and those kinds of budget games of the late 80s and early 90s.
It’s still early days in the game and there isn’t a great deal to do, apart from shoot the other enemies, who just disappear at the moment. It’s a proof of concept, and one which looks pretty good, especially with its hi-res overlaid characters.
What was the intention of the development? Was this to be submitted to a disk magazine or budget label of the time, or was it being done just for fun. We hope to hear from Bjarke one day to find out more about the plans for the game, and if it ever got beyond this early demo. It’s doubtful that it did, but you never know – maybe there is a fully playable budget title to uncover one day.
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