Games That Weren't^®

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!

An interesting car racing game preview, where it seems you would have been able to win races and upgrade the spec of your car to compete again later on.

A lot of work seems to be still required, and the game was possibly abandoned at a mid-way stage. The playable element to it doesn’t really have much interaction at all, apart from allowing you to scroll up the map.

We’re not sure if this was intended for any commercial company, but hope to hear from the developer in the future to find out more.