Games That Weren't^®

Our next entry is an abandoned puzzler that was being developed in Hungary around 1992 by Domasoft (Who don’t seem to have done any other games?). It seems to be functional, though i’m not fully sure what you have to do (it’s probably simple, so my apologies!). Thanks to Csaba Virag for providing the title.

There is also another title of the same name in Gamebase64 that was done a year later, but it is believed to be a completely different development.

At the moment we’re not sure exactly why this development wasn’t finished off and properly released, but hope to learn more soon.

For now, check out the preview that hasn’t really been seen before.

This is a title that seems to be missing at present and we believe was due for release by Novotrade. The same team that did titles such as Impossible Mission 2 and Express Raider on the C64.

Now the last title is particularly important, as one of the developers working on that game was Hungarian Istvan Ratkai, who is the developer of this early Tetris development credited to Istvan and found by Csaba Virag.

It seems to be mostly finished, but lacking a lot of polish overall. Because of Istvan’s links to Novotrade, we are pretty convinced that this is the same game that is currently listed at https://hungame.blog/segits-te-is-kutatni/ as missing.

We don’t know what happened to the title or if it progressed any further, but hope to hear from Istvan very soon to find out more.

Cavery210 makes a good point in the comments that it may have been canned due to the licence not being valid or having some kind of cease and desist. Hopefully we’ll find out more soon.

It is with much regret that I am adding Paul Koller’s VVVVVV into the archives, which seems to have been abandoned now with a final preview released in 2017 that was its last state from back in 2011.

Paul has been producing a number of other fantastic de-makes onto the C64, including titles such as Super Breadbox, but VVVVVV seems to have been permanently parked at the moment due to the release of another conversion that was completed elsewhere. Perhaps they don’t see the need to complete it now the other version has been done instead.

There are a fair few omissions and flaws (which the developer admits to) with the final version that saw release, so there would still be space for Paul’s version to shine. Hopefully some day he may change his mind and go back to the development. For now, check out a glimpse of how close Paul was getting.

A short and interesting little preview, where you control a man within a maze who just collects a bunch of objects to open a door.

That is pretty much it at this stage, and is essentially a sprite/collision test rather than an actual playable preview/game. Once you collect all the objects, the door opens and nothing else happens.

Very early days and seems to have been abandoned long ago. Would be interesting to see what was planned for the title or if a later version exists. Check it out for now and hopefully we’ll find out more about it soon.

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?

More soon we hope on this one.

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.