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 short entry for a game that you can currently play, but not in its originally intended form.
Strider 2 was a poor sequel released for various 8-bit and 16-bit platforms by US Gold and developed by Tiertex. Originally the game started off as a game called “TOR”, which stood for Transforming Overland Robot.
According to artist Wayne Billingham (who was asked to tidy up the Strider 2 artwork), the original game was so bad that they decided to just stick Strider graphics into the game to try and sell it.
We assume that the main character was originally some kind of robot that you controlled, with the potential to transform into different vehicles. Elements of this seem to be still present in Strider 2, where you can transform into a limited moving robot. It is therefore likely that the game’s backgrounds and sprites survived and were used in the Strider game, but much could well have been chopped/changed.
Paul has mentioned previously that he no longer has anything of his C64 work, so its likely that the original work is lost for good. But who knows – maybe some day an early demo will surface via strange means.
A quick entry for a new game that has been dug out by C64 musician JCH, which was a puzzle based game due out in the early 1990s, but was just never to be. JCH produced a number of tunes for the game which were unused and have been in HVSC for years.
JCH reports – “This is a preview of the ‘Push It’ game I made music for many decades ago. It’s from May 1990. The game was never finished.”
This is very likely the last stage that the game had ever gotten to, and its very unlikely now that it will ever be finished. We hope to maybe learn more from the developers about the title in the near future.
A very quick entry for a game that was submitted by Roy Widding for the GTW archives.
This is a cool unfinished game that was to be a deluxe version of the great 4k Lumberjack game that was part of the 2016 RESET Craptastic 4kb Game Compo. The game is certainly not crap at all, and is a great fun and deviously addictive title. The deluxe version was of course to expand and add a lot more presentational features, gameplay elements to stretch beyond the 4k limitations.
The developer Roy Widding (Rotteroy/Megastyle) unfortunately lost interest during the process creating the game. They have now been uploaded to CSDB, and now also to GTW64 as abandoned titles.
A shame, as both Flyboy and Lumberjack Deluxe are both very playable titles. Though sometimes these things just happen, and i’m sure that Roy will be back with another new title soon.
A very quick entry for a game that was submitted by Roy Widding for the GTW archives.
This is a cool unfinished game that is based on Flyboy arcade machine from 1982 by Kaneko. The aim is simply to kick flying objects and pick up flags as you fly on a glider.
The developer Roy Widding (Rotteroy/Megastyle) wanted to recreate the arcade game that he grew up playing back in 1985, but lost interest during the process creating the game. They have now been uploaded to CSDB, and now also to GTW64 as abandoned titles.
A shame, as both Flyboy and Lumberjack Deluxe are both very playable titles. Though sometimes these things just happen, and i’m sure that Roy will be back with another new title soon.
A quick entry for a title that was spotted in a catalogue for Ringside/EAS Software/Procovision by Martin/Stadium64. This was a puzzler style game which was a bit similar to Pengo. http://www.mobygames.com/game/roll-out
Versions were released for the Amiga and ST, but the C64 version is very much at large. Was it ever released or even started though?
A quick entry for a title that was spotted by Martin/Stadium64. Although there is a “European SuperLeague – Football Fortunes 2.” by CDS, “European Superleague” was confusingly a completely different title with a similar name.
Versions were released for the Spectrum, but the C64 version is very much at large, even though mentioned in the manual. Was it ever released or even started though?
According to Fabrizio Bartoloni – in issue #38 of “Super Commodore 64/128” (page 40-41) reviews CDS’ European Superleague referring to it as a C64 game in the body of the review while accompanying it with Amiga screenshots. Does that mean they had an actual C64 copy of the game?
This rather oddly named title was to be released in the US by a company called EnTech, and was believed to be an arcade action game where you must go underground and defeat the ‘Babies of the Dirt’, and also watch out for ‘Mother’, who I assume was some kind of enemy that would hunt you down in the game. The game was advertised in a few early magazines of the time.
Nothing much else is known about the title at all, though the following web page did some research over 10 years ago and had confirmation from a Matthew Stern (Entech’s PR rep at the time) that the game was never released.
However, the music oddly surfaced in the “Studio 64” package that Entech did release, which you can find a download of here. Its possible that the person who developed Studio 64, may have done Babies of the Dirt perhaps?
Well, it was confirmed via a video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSq1350WusA&t=1284s by Matthew that the game was to be developed by Ray Soular, but it was never finished. Matthew also never saw anything of the game either. It could be that only the music has survived afterall.
More information needed – is there a concept demo out there, but also why was it cancelled and how did it actually play?
Thanks to Marco Das, Lawrence Fletcher and Benji Edwards for the scans also added to this page from the above source. Also Max Mirni for flagging up the video interview with Matthew Stern.
A quick entry for a title that has recently been recovered and released over at http://www.pagetable.com/?p=940 .
This is a title that was written back in 1986 by Peter Hempel and written in German. It has been translated in 2018 into English by Lisa Brodner and Michael Steil.
We know little about where the game has come from, but here it is – and hopefully we’ll learn more soon, including if there was commercial release intention for the game.
A very short entry to put down a marker for hopefully finding some missing 32K entry games for the Mekka & Symposium 2000 demo party and their 32k game competition.
A number of games were listed and we believe are C64 based titles, though are currently missing. These are:
DISCLAIMER: We are a non-profit digitisation project, aiming to digitally preserve software and history which would otherwise be lost for good. If for any reason there is anything that you do not wish to be on the website, please contact us for removal.
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