Martin Piper has recently preserved all of his work disks from his collection, ranging from the late 80’s to early 90’s.
Some disk images are currently unknown of their content fully, but most have been labelled correctly.
Unreleased & Cancelled Video Games across many platforms.
Welcome to Games That Weren't!
We are an Unreleased and Cancelled 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 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 video game history since 1999.
Martin Piper has recently preserved all of his work disks from his collection, ranging from the late 80’s to early 90’s.
Some disk images are currently unknown of their content fully, but most have been labelled correctly.
Well, the news continues to get better – with confirmation from Mark Campbell that all the Last Ninja 2 disks were fully recovered – with the complete code, art and music recovered in all.
Not only that, but a massive bonus has been the discovery that some of the disks also contained some long lost demos which were originally seen in the Konix videos.
This includes the infamous 3D cube demo and also the Big heads game – Head Invaders. Hopefully we’ll see some videos of these soon.
There is more, with another Konix game on the cards – more soon on this as and when we have the go ahead to mention it :)
An amazing update on the recent discovery of the Last Ninja 2 disks for the Konix Multi-system. One disk has been read so far, and the results have been very positive – with the game being now emulated and running!
And here is the video of it up and running!
We guess that more work will also occur on getting the rest of the disks preserved and everything emulated in as close as to a final state as possible. The video means hearing some previously unheard Dave Lowe tunes for the first time in over 20 years.
Exciting times! More soon as we hear it!
A second update of the year and our first real big recovery so far!
Blue Sun, Telmar’s Gold, Wendellwood Estates
All Terrain Gardener, Arcade Classics 2, Bushido Warrior, Escape From Mars, Hope To Hopp 2, Hydrogenese, Rebelstar, Rebelstar 2, The SuperCan, Your Computer Software Exchange
Some amazing news through today from Mark Campbell (who runs the fantastic Konix Multisystem site), that a copy of Last Ninja 2 on the Konix Multisystem has been found by an ex-developer at Attention to Detail, Jon Steele.
It is still very much early days, and the disks are still to be checked and read. The condition looks good though, so it is hopeful that they are still readable after all this time. They are believed to be a mixture of PC format and Konix formatted disks – and efforts are now underway to preserve them. The game itself was pretty much close to completion (if not actually complete).
If all goes to plan, the guys are hoping to get some videos showing the game actually running to see how it compares to the released versions. Dave Lowe is believed to be responsible for the audio, so there could be some previously unheard Dave Lowe tunes too.
We hope to have more for you soon!
Happy New Year everyone! Work never stops on GTW64, and here is another 12 updates for you. The big one includes the finding of “The Birds” as part of the Your Computer Software Exchange, thanks to the excellent efforts of Chris Kraus!
Thanks also to Gaz Spence on flagging up a few titles which are actually out there and were released – included in this update. Enjoy!
Baffle, Catch 2, Eye Of The Moon, Force Of The Vulcan, Hangman Deluxe, Hydrogenese, MiniDon, Reflect, The 4th Dimension, The SuperCan, Your Computer Software Exchange, Zaxon
Welcome to our yearly Christmas update, which seems to have come round far too quick. Due to how the site gets more regularly updated, this year we had no backlog for the first time in years!
This meant new content was hard to come by. We have some brand new findings for you as usual, but the rest has been a trawl through the excellent Gamebase 64 to create a ton of new entries. Enjoy the updates, now i’m off to enjoy the festive booze!…
Thanks to John Christian Lønningdal, we are very happy to see Boxing Manager 2 fully preserved at long last. Reviewed in Commodore Format, it was uncertain whether the game had been released, and now this confirms it indeed was, but in limited numbers
We have been sifting through more development disks from Cory Kin, and have uncovered some more very cool early previews. Highlights include Ah-Type and Vertical Shooter. Check them out!
Ah Type, Badminton game, Unknown shooter, Unknown platformer game, Uridium clone, Vertical shooter
A bizarre and early vertically scrolling game, based in some urban area has been added. It’s very early, but one for us to do some digging on…
Is it the start of a sideway scrolling beat-em-up like Renegade? We found a sprite set called “Carlo”, and it seems to be something new. Do you know what it is?
Mostly a raid of the previews section of Gamebase 64, we have gradually started adding more previews into GTW64. Part of an ongoing project!
3D Roam, Black Knight 2, Blackshagger, Blown Away for $50, Bounch!, Boxes, Boxing game, Brickout, Brickwall, Busta, Candyman, Cola Quest, Crystalopis, Cyberiad, Cyberworm, Deep in Space, Detroit Invader, Dozo Quest, Dr Bongo’s Safari Park, Dump, Dungeons, Empire Vision, Evasion, Eye Of The Beholder, Fantastic Voyage, Find the Pair!, Football Manager 97, Freewheel Burning, Futris, Galago, Galaxy Cop, Genocide, Get Ready, Griffin, Grubz, Infer, Jump, Kill Him, King Of The Road, Mafia Warz, Mega Moto, Mezzo-Tint, MiniDon, Mission X, Moonspell, Moonstone, Move It!, Move Out, Mr Wong’s Loopy Laundry, Mystery, Nefarious, Nitro, Now Shoot, On Table, One Man Army, Phantasm and Fantasy, Phantom Rider, Preview Game, Project Sparkk, Prometheus, Prototype, Rem Force, Sector, Sky-Jack, Skylight, Snoopy 2, Snow Bros, Sokoban, Sonic The Hedgehog, Space Killer, Spectral Sneer, Speed, Spider Chase, Sput, Squelc, Squid, Star Scaper, Stone, Stoned, Story of Captain Hook, Super Ball 2, Super Bouncer, TWO, Telecommando, The Attack of the Blue Bomber, The SuperCan, Toms Revenge, Trailrunner, Vitrus, Watch It, Who Fried My Concorde, Xoanon Reptilia, Xytris – The Game
And finally a series of existing entry updates, based on recent contributions and findings. Gold Train in particular is pretty interesting!
Autoguard, C64GS cartridge titles, Castle Capers, Charlie Chaplin, Cop Out, Death Blow, Djinn, Enterprise, Evolution Cryser, Force Of Four, Future Shock, Gold Train, Goreemium, Gunboat, Here and there with the Mr Men, Italian Night 99, Kid Saviour, Last Ninja V1, Lost Maze, Mega Twins, Megatree, Mindsmear, Paranoid, Rhyme Land, Rick Dangerous 3, Samber 2, Samurai Warrior V1, Scooby Doo, The Great Space Race, The Ninja Eggs, The Soul Gem Of Martek, The Tripods, Venom Blazer
And that is it! We hope you all have a fantastic Christmas and New Year, and we hope to keep bringing you new findings well into 2015. This of course is a project which has no end in sight! :)
More from Ross Sillifant, with an interview with Nigel Kershaw. Take it away Ross!…
It is my absolute pleasure to be able to interview Mr. Nigel ‘Pig’ Kershaw, so Nigel, if you would be so kind, could you take a moment to tell our readers just who you are and where and what you’ve worked on during your time in the video games industry?
I’m a games designer by trade, always have been since dropping out of university in 1989. Back then there weren’t many people who called themselves designers, and certainly no degrees that taught Games Design. I fell into it because I used to run games of D&D for a bunch of folks who happened to make videogames. They wanted to make a computer RPG, I thought that sounded better than the burger-flipping McJob I fallen into. 25 years later, much to my parents chagrin, I’m still avoiding ‘proper’ jobs.
In that time I’ve been involved in the design of about eighteen published games and a host of others that fell by the wayside. I’ve worked for numerous studios including Ocean, Psygnosis and Sony, and designed in genres as diverse as point and click adventures, space sims, racing, platformers, A.R. and text adventures.
Q) Opening question has to be…’Pig’ Kershaw? Dare we ask…lol…
Ross Sillifant provides GTW with another new interview, this time with Franck Sauer. Take it away Ross! …
It is with great pleasure I get the chance to ‘chat’ to another industry legend, Franck Sauer, so Franck, without further ado, could you please introduce yourself to our readers and give us a little background info on your good self, if you could be so kind:
Hey Ross, my pleasure. Well it all goes back to when I was 13, I started doing pixel graphics and small programs in BASIC on my first computer, a Ti-99/4a back in 1982. Making stuff happen on the TV screen was just black magic at the time, and I got hooked pretty quickly. A few years later, I met a friend at school who was programming on C64.
I wasn’t too bad at doing art for the 8 bit machine, so we decided to create a game together in our spare time, every evening after school. It took us three years to finish it, but the game (‘never Outside’) eventually got published and it was our entry ticket for the buoyant games industry.
I got hired by Ubisoft to work on 8 bit games such as ‘Iron Lord’ and from there moved back onto independent development on the Amiga. I never stopped working in the games industry since. What I really love about making games is the combination of art and technology, as I’ve never been able to choose one over the other.
Onto the questions:
Ross Sillifant has very kindly offered us an interview with Geoff Phillips (of Mighty Bombjack (c64) fame among others) to put onto the site, so without further delay i’ll hand you over to Ross…
As part of my on-going series of interviews intended to get some of our ‘lesser known’ coding heroes the coverage they deserve, it’s with great pleasure i’m able to put a few questions to a Mr Geoff Phillips……
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