Games That Weren't^®

A short entry for a title that was recovered by Genesis Project in early 2019 from the work disks of scener Scrap. He stated to GP that this was a preview of a game that would never be finished.

It’s a shame really, as Warball is a nice looking early phase Pang clone. There isn’t much to the game at this stage, and its more of a test to see the concept working.

This is as far as the game ever got, but we’re unsure why it was cancelled exactly and hope to find out more about it in the future. For now, check out a short preview of yet another early, yet promising title that never was.

Our next entry is a title that was apparently intended for Firebird, though it may have been wishful thinking. Was it ever submitted to Firebird, who in 1989/90 were changing into MicroProse software?

The game itself seems to have never been finished, perhaps because a publisher was never found. It is a fairly simple sideways scrolling car racing game (in space, as the title suggests) but is a little too fast to be fully playable and needs some adjustments. It comes with some nice digi sounds and does have plenty of promise at this early stage.

Creator Kim Lundorff Madsen got in touch via the comments in March 2024, and confirmed that they had created the game whilst at high school in 1989. They had done demos, but wanted to try and make a proper game that was inspired by several other older games at the time.

At the time though it was being developed, Kim had got an Amiga and the job to finish the game became laborious and no longer a work of love. He just wanted to finish it, so he did it all quickly.

Several brandings were made for various distributors, and not just Firebird and the game was sent out to everyone. Kim didn’t know how to reach Firebird, but found an old address and sent a disk. He never heard anything back – but then Firebird had likely moved and were picked up by that point by MicroProse.

He also never heard anything back from the others, but its likely it was via the address it went to that it got leaked. The game would sadly never properly see the light of day, but its thanks to the leak that you can see and play it.

Hard to believe it’s been 10 years since the release of this preview. I remember it very well when it first came out, and being a clever twist on Pacman, where you control a ghost instead.

Lovely looking graphics and an idea which sadly seems to never have got any further.

Nothing more yet is known about the game, but after 10 years – its fairly safe to assume its been abandoned. Maybe with the new resurgence of C64 games over the past 5-6 years, they could be tempted to finish it.

Dynaboys is a pretty impressive early Dynablaster clone from 1993, which ironically looks quite close to the official C64 conversion that never got released. It’s quite uncanny actually, and I wonder if its related to that development at all? Or maybe the developers replicated from the advert screenshot?

There’s still plenty of work to be done, but this demo has quite a few features already – and you can play a game of Dynablaster – with bombs that explode and bricks that disappear.

It’s a shame that it never got finished, as back in 1993 the C64 market could really have done with the conversion. Luckily we would get some decent Bomberman clones in the end.

Due to the date – I am really curious as to whether this was meant to be an official conversion at any stage. There just seems to be a few co-incidences in relation to the abandoned official conversion (dimensions of the play area etc).

Do you know anything more about this preview/development?

An early 1990 puzzle game, of which there were a flood back then which were started and abandoned it seems. This was yet another.

I’m not fully sure what you have to do, but the game is well presented and could have made a half decent PD/Covermount game had it been completed.

Nothing else is really known about the game, but we assume the developer abandoned it and gave it over to a cracking crew to put out there.

I really admire Black Turk’s ambition to try and squeeze what many would feel are impossible games for the C64. He also attempted Sonic The Hedgehog and Snow Bros conversions which were never going to work, but it was fun to see (Well maybe Snow Bros is actually possible – see Ice Guys for instance).

Angry Birds Style was Black Turk’s next attempt at the impossible. I’m not sure if the intention has always been to do a serious conversion, or just to do a proof of concept for fun. There isn’t much to the game, no real gameplay at all – but it was fun loading up.

I hope to see something again from Black Turk in the future – but hopefully something that doesn’t go into this archive.

Heartlight 64 is a nice early single screen Boulderdash clone created by the author of Assembloids which sadly seems to have been abandoned.

Featuring some nice effective graphics, it still feels a little raw – but its perfectly playable and you can see it would make a nice addition to the Boulderdash range of games within the C64’s archive.

We’re unsure exactly what happened to the game and if there are plans to resurrect it – but check it out for now as a good curiosity.

Our next title is a superb looking Scramble development that was started around 2009 and seems to have sadly gone off the radar.

I remember being stunned by the amazing looking bitmap graphics and scroller, which has the level data streamed off the disk. It’s playable, and you can blow things up and play a decent version of Scramble – though many elements are still missing at present.

We were not fully sure why nothing more happened with the game or why it never progressed any further. However in December 2021, we were treated to a surprise release of the game in its final state some 11 years or so on:

https://csdb.dk/release/?id=211909&show=summary#summary

The game has been released on the Zzap 2022 annual coverdisk which was part of a yearly kickstarter. It means that thankfully this game has escaped the GTW vaults and is now a case closed with a happy ending! :-)

And finally, here is where you can download the game for yourself: https://csdb.dk/release/?id=212252

Case closed!

Next up is a nice early run and gun game with some good graphics – very much like a title you’d expect to see released by Players/Rack-IT as a budget title perhaps in 1990.

There are about 4 levels in total in this preview, but not much to actually do unfortunately. It’s a good indication though of a promising game, and a shame that it seems to have fell by the wayside. We don’t believe that it ever got past this stage in the end.

Not much else is known about it or where it came from – if you know anything more about the game – please get in touch!

Our next entry is something I had hoped not to add to the archives, but sadly it does seem to have been abandoned.

This is a brilliant conversion of the Amiga classic Pinball Dreams, that first wowed C64 users back in 2006, when the developer first showed their attempts at an accurate conversion. After a lot of effort to get the ball physics working well and high detailed graphics for the tables – many of us were very impressed.

Jason Kelk later contributed a brilliant second table conversion, which added to all the excitement.

Over the years, there have been attempts to try and coax the conversion to completion – but it seems that other things have sadly got in the way and it may never happen. I hope things change and we can take this one out of the archives.

Check it out for yourself if you haven’t seen it before!