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.
Nothing of the C64 edition can be found online, and with Nicolas being a close friend of a coder in the Babygang group – its possible that a pre-release version of the game was perhaps obtained back in the late 80’s and Nicolas saw that.
Looking on Gamebase, there is a similarly titled game which may be by the very same author of this title called Murder on the Atlantic – its likely part of the same series, as this too was by Cobrasoft: http://www.gb64.com/game.php?id=14700&d=18
Cobrasoft was founded by Bertrand Brocard, and the French wikipedia page (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobrasoft) on the house does list the game for the C64.
Interestingly in 2013, there was a crack intro release for the game, but no actual game. So what happened? … http://csdb.dk/release/?id=117273
Thanks to Sam64H and Olivier Cappelaere, the game has been found and fully preserved. The game was indeed released and just had a very limited release overall.
Our next GTW title can only be described as stunning. Though it is with sadness that we are placing it into the archives on the request of the author Johan Forslöf.
We have spoken to Johan over the past few years about the title, and each time we’ve encouraged him to continue and try to pick up the drive to finish the extemely promising title. We have resisted adding the title to the archive given that there was still a chance it could be finished. The game was started around 7-8 years ago and has been come back to on numerous occasions.
This year was different, and Johan has told us to just go ahead and put the final preview into the archives. The game shows a very ‘Braid’ looking main character, who with his hi-res overlay, looks amazing and animates very well. The backgrounds I thought were done with extended background mode, but they are actually standard multi-colour hi-res (though Johan planned to do ECM at a later stage). They are wonderfully atmospheric, with a few enemies that you can shoot.
There is not a huge amount to do just yet, apart from explore the multi-directional scrolling areas of the castle environment at this stage, but it is a great indication of what a fantastic game this really could be. The problem is that Johan has kept losing motivation with the game, and has never been fully sure what the full direction of the game should be.
The good news is that Johan is still open for the game to be continued, but needs someone to help give motivation and ideas to further progress the game. So rather than a graveyard entry, we want this potentially to be an advert for something that could be more. Possibly code and artistic assistance to take the game forward. If anyone is interested, please contact me and I can forward your details to Johan.
It would be a shame to see this one die. Can it be saved?
A short entry for a title that we need to find out more about from Mike (Kernal) Berry.
This was likely to be a sideways scrolling shooter that Mike Berry was producing for a budget label or similar back around 1989-1990 time which never saw the light of day. Some test graphics of a lunarscape were produced by Roy Fielding and sent to Mike for checking out.
This test demo was sent to Clockwize back in 1990 when Roy tried to get work with the development company, and the disk was recovered and sent to GTW from Dean Hickingbottom in 2017. As well as this demo, you can also download the original submission disk that Roy sent.
We asked Mike about the game, and it had taken him completely by surprise and is a brief title that has been long forgotten. The game had no specific title, but was to be a cross between Defender and Lunar Jetman. The first couple of levels were to however play more like Moon Patrol, which Roy’s graphics were likely to be used within.
Mike cannot recall anything else at present, though will be in touch if he finds anything or has more recollections. He believes that the game didn’t get much past the scrolling and ship control stage.
Our next entry into the GTW archives comes thanks to Francesco Milioni, which was due for release on a tape compilation to be released in Italy, but was too late due to the declining C64 market.
Traffico is a revisited version of an original basic frogger-like game that was published in Italy by Gruppo Editoriale Jackson. Francesco took the game, added music, a nice intro, modified sprites and graphics. He also compiled the game with AustroComp, so that it became a lot faster and smoother to play. The original in BASIC was far too slow.
We’ve added the original game (on TAP image) as a comparison.
It’s a game that may not hold your attention for too long, but it is yet another title now preserved.
Another title which should have been added to the GTW archives a very long time ago, after evidence of a C64 conversion was found in a manual of a released version of the game.
Q*Bert’s Qubes was a sequel to the highly popular Q*Bert arcade, but never shared the same levels of success as its predecessor. It complicated things maybe a bit too much by having the ability to rotate cubes in multiple directions to make a line in a colour set by the level.
Parker Brothers no doubt felt the game would still sell on the strength of the original, and planned conversions to most popular home platforms. The C64 version would never surface though, possibly due to the games division going under before it could see release.
In 2017, Scott Stilphen got in touch to pass on some games to the GTW archive – one of which included a preserved disk from artist Robin Ballweg, who turns out was the artist on the C64 conversion. On one of her disks was an executable preview of the game, showing something mostly playable. This was being produced for James Wickstead Design Associates for Parker Brothers during 1984.
It is a wonderful finding of a game that we were never sure actually existed. Here it is, and it is mostly playable and shows a solid conversion taking place. Maybe some day a more complete version could be found?
Our next entry into the GTW archives comes thanks to Francesco Milioni, which was due for release on a tape compilation to be released in Italy, but was too late due to the declining C64 market.
Flock is a clone of Satan’s Hollow, and borrows graphics from the original game and various sprites, music and routines from other titles. The result is an original game though where you must shoot down flocks of birds.
Francesco built the game in assembly, possibly with some in compiled BASIC. It’s a simple but fun shooter which was typical of the games found on the Italian compilation tapes that were so popular. Many of the games would be hacked versions of released titles, with different titles and sometimes graphics.
Our next title was found on a development disk that was likely given to Cory Kin by Mat Sneap back in the Compunet days.
There isn’t anything playable unfortunately, but it seems that Mat Sneap produced a range of graphics for a game called ‘Runner’.
It isn’t known what exactly the game entailed, or who the developer was (probably Mat himself). Hopefully Mat may recall some more details for us to further flesh out this entry.
For now, check out the graphic mock-ups that have been recovered. If you know anything more about it, then please do get in touch.
Thanks to Csaba Virág for passing on our next GTW entry, which is a Hungarian text adventure produced by Cream in 1992. The title translates roughly into ‘A little fling’.
Unfortunately you probably won’t be able to play the game unless you know some Hungarian. We do not know also how complete the game is, but its believed to be incomplete.
It is possible that the game was being produced for a release on a games magazine at the time, though more details are needed to confirm.
Hopefully we will find out more about this title soon.
A short entry for a V1 edition of a released game that many of us enjoyed growing up.
Tucked away on a work disk of Mat Sneap, was this early build of Garfield that shows some of the game with multi-directional scrolling compared to the final game.
It’s clearly still some way off from being the complete game we all know, but its an interesting curiosity prototype none-the-less to show you. Why was the multi-scrolling dropped for instance?
In addition to the preview, is the screen designer tool that was being used to construct all of the game’s map.
Our next entry into the GTW archives comes thanks to Francesco Milioni, which was due for release on a tape compilation to be released in Italy, but was too late due to the declining C64 market.
Memo was a computerized version of Simon written in BASIC with some charset and music enhancements. It’s a simple and fun version of the game and was a filler title for the compilation tape. Had the tape been released, it may have been compiled.
It’s a game that may not hold your attention for too long, but it is yet another title now preserved.
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.
Games That Weren't® is the registered trademark of Frank Gasking.
