Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
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 quick post thanks to Grzegorz Antosiewicz, with a series of screenshots and magazine scans showing unused assets and features not found in the final version of Alien Breed 3D. The game was previewed in many magazines during 1995, with some of the most interesting screens being shown in CU Amiga magazine. The first preview is from March 1995:
An impressive looking title which featured a massive dragon main character, which took up most of the screen. This was to be a second title signed up by Firebird from ICOM Simulations, along with Blazing Barrels (which also never saw release).
The game was shown briefly in a few magazines, and TelecomSoft’s Richard Hewison recalls seeing the game on the ST and how simple it was:
“Dragon was never advertised, and the development version on the ST was extremely simple. Basically, on the left you saw a castle with a drawbridge. The drawbridge was open, and a large dragon sprite could walk along the drawbridge and back. That was about it! The whole thing looked and felt a little bit like ‘Black Lamp’ which Firebird had only published earlier the same year (1988).
I have no recollection as to what happened to the deal with ICOM (UK) Ltd. It might have still been active when BT sold the labels to MicroProse, or the deal might have already been dead.”
Cyber Assault was a vector-based obstacle course game announced by ARC. In the game you must control a character called TRAX (an exo-skeletal humanoid), who can run, jump and walk through a 3D universe. Impressively he would have displayed over 70 faces animated accurately at 15 frames per second.
The story would go that years ago, you murdered a civi-cop and were then imprisoned for life. Once a year, the worst prisoner is given the chance of freedom by entering the Cyber Assault. A deadly obstacle course race. Win and you are free. Fail and you are a dead man. Continue reading
As part of the launch and release of The Games That Weren’t book, we are adding assets and content that didn’t make it to print as bonus DLC content to share with you.
Within the book is an in-depth and detailed 16 page story about the ambitious MARSOC development by Zombie Studios. A game inspired by titles such as Gears of War and Call of Duty, the title would set you within the lawless port of Massawa, Eritrea – hunting down a dangerous warlord called Limbano.
We talk to Zombie Studios founder Mark Long, senior level designer Erik Bretz, producer John Williamson about the promising development, which at one point had been picked up by SEGA for publication. You can read the full story about the development in the Games That Weren’t book.
This was to be the last of a trilogy of Nightbreed games produced by Ocean Software in 1990 and produced by Imagitec, overseen by David Wightman. The game would utilize essentially the same engine as Times of Lore, which they developed on the Amiga. This means it is likely that Adrian Waterhouse and Julian Gardner were the developers, with Nigel Cook on graphics duty.
Not to be confused with the recent Psytronik release of the same name, Rotator was a one/two player tank game, where you would have to link a number of generators together to boost their flagging power. This is due to an alien invasion which is disrupting the world’s energy systems, and has thrown civilisation into chaos.
As part of the launch and release of The Games That Weren’t book, we are adding assets and content that didn’t make it to print as bonus DLC content to share with you.
Within the book is an in-depth and detailed 10 page story about the Game Boy Advance conversion of Tork. We talk to head of Realism Studios, Andy Onions, developer Neil Millstone and artist Michael Smith about the development, which at one stage overtook the XBox development due to the efficiency of the Realism team.
Thanks to Grzegorz Antosiewicz and Hall of Light, here are a number of early screens from Fire and Ice on the Commodore Amiga showing a few assets that didn’t make the final cut.
Grzegorz found early screenshots in various magazines (ACE, CU Amiga, Generation 4 (1991 October), Power Play (1991 issue 4), The One (1992 April).)), showing the game before the main protagonist was set in stone. Continue reading
A short entry for a title that was previewed in Generation 4 magazine, issue 19 from 1990 – thanks to Grzegorz Antosiewicz for the heads up. The game was called AAA for the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST. The magazine snippet was brief, but said the following:
“AAA is a fabulous arcade / strategy game, with awe-inspiring graphics and animations. Suffice to say that we will talk to you about it soon! The game will be released on Amiga and ST during 1990.”
Thanks to Grzegorz Antosiewicz, here are a number of early screens from Alien 3 on the Amiga, featuring an unused picture with the Alien head (which Grzegorz believes was going to be a level loading screen) and a screenshot showing a different score panel arrangement from Amiga Action magazine.
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