Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
Welcome to Games That Weren't!
We are a 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.
Thanks to Nic / Xidex, we learn that within a sequence file on the disk version of Stellar 7, there was a message from the coder which said that there were tentative plans to write a sequel to the game called “Nova 9: The Revenge of Raf Torin”.
Sadly it was never to appear, but we did get to see Arctic Fox, which Damon Slye worked on. Was this perhaps what his sequel turned into?
However, years later there was a game called “Nova 9: The Return Of Gir Draxon” on the Amiga and PC, a very similar 3D shooter. Within the notes of Stellar 7, Gir Draxon is mentioned in the storyline – so it is clear that the game is related.
So, the question is whether anything was ever started on the Commodore 64 game, or was it merely just an idea that was never implemented?
Yet another lost title which has been found thanks to Csaba Virag and Norbert Temesvari (Oberon / Faces). This is a long lost Battleships game that seems to be nearly finished, but with a few bugs.
It seems to be fully working though, with menu, music and all the usual polish. We’re not sure at this point in time why it never got properly released.
However, here it is, so you can checkout for yourself!
UPDATE: It has been confirmed by Michael Hart that this game was released as Narnia in 1984 and can be found in Gamebase64. Case closed!
A short entry for a title which we know little about, but was flagged up by Zdrmonster, where a video on K-Byte shows an unknown game running. This was posted about thanks to GDRI.
It seems to depict a yellow character that is running around a top down/2.5D viewpoint, possibly collecting green circles and avoiding Mr Do style enemies and a wizard character on the left side.
A very short entry for an expansion pack that is currently missing for Skyfox 2, which would add a 10 additional missions. This could be ordered from Dynamix back in the 1980s and was flagged up by Martin/Stadium64 on the Lemon64 forums.
Unfortunately no one has come forward yet with owning a copy – so was it ever actually released?
If you know anything more about it, please do get in touch! :)
A short entry for another seemingly lost Commodore 64 title called Hårsfjärden. The game seems to involve you using a helicopter to repel submarines by dropping depth charges nearby, but without hitting. Hårsfjärden is a fjard south of Stockholm in Sweden where a submarine hunt took place in the early 1980s.
The game was developed by two brothers, Pierre and Robert Sandboge and the two were interviewed in issue 1 of Min Hemdator in 1983 (see scans). A small article was done in 2014 which is worth a read too.
In 1983, Pierre gets in touch with Swedish publisher Handic to ask whether they’d like to publish his games for the VIC 20. Quote from the book:
“The relationship with Handic leads to Pierre and his brother Robert being asked to make a game for the Commodore 64 when it is launched in 1983 [in Sweden]. Since submarine incidents are a hot topic at the time they want the game to be named Hårsfjärden, after the waters where submarine hunts have taken place during October 1982.
A C64 cartridge may contain either 8 or 16 kb and they start developing the game with the maximum amount of memory in mind. Hårsfjärden is demonstrated at the Nordiska Mikrodatormässan (Nordic Microcomputer Expo) in 1983 and is by then almost completely finished.
But Handic gets cheap for some reason and wants the game to fit into the cheaper 8 Kb cart. The brothers try to compress the code, but are not successful enough and the game is sadly cancelled in the end. Despite this, it can still be found in some price lists.”
It looks like the game was close to being finished – so can it be preserved? Hopefully with the names known – we’ll see this game in the future.
We’re all familiar with the educational Disney games that were released on the Commodore 64, though an advert unearthed by Marco Das has highlighted another title in the range which is currently missing.
Mickey’s Crossword Puzzle Maker is a title which is pretty self explanatory. It was released on a number of platforms, but not the C64. The question is whether there was any intention for a conversion?
Considering that the other games were converted, I’d be surprised if a C64 edition was not being considered. So what happened to it, and can anything of it be saved? Perhaps one of those who worked on the other games worked on this too?
If you know anything more, please do get in touch.
A new title saved thanks to the efforts of Csaba Virag, and another from Christian Szegedy, who also created the Waterloo game in our archives. It is thanks to Balazs Oszvald (Poison / Singular) for fixing up the title so that it loads properly as well.
Christian also coded the game Ural that was released in 1990 but didn’t do much else apart from this game and Waterloo. Csaba suggests that Christian may now be a famous scholar of Mathematics in Hungary.
We assume that the game is complete, and it is a sort of Life simulation type game which was popular years ago. If you know or learn anything more about this game – please do get in touch!
A short entry for a title highlighted by contributor Ricky Derocher, and which was due for release back in 1985 by Windham Classics – the same team that created classics such as Below the Root and Wizard of Oz.
In a catalogue that came with Swiss Family Robinson, there is a very small advert for a Robin Hood game that is coming soon, along with Wizard of Oz and to be available in the spring of 1985.
Of course, sadly the game was never to arrive, leaving us wondering what type of game it may have been. Our guess is that it would have been a graphic text adventure in the same format as The Wizard of Oz or Swiss Family Robinson – so potential candidates of people involved could include: Howard Boles (Musician), John Pierard (Graphics), Michael P. Meyer (Code), Daniel J. Mydlack (Graphics) and Seth Godin (Code).
As Ricky righly suggests – the game could also have been an action/adventure game – perhaps using the Below the Root/Alice in Wonderland engine. In which case, our candidates could be: William (Bill) Groetzinger (Graphics), Vince Mills (Code) or Dale Disharoon.
Nothing else is unfortunately known at this stage. Do you know anything more?
A quick entry for now for a very early Antiriad style game, with a very similar protagonist that flies and walks around a simple map at the moment.
Not much is known about the demo, though a very early preview has been doing the rounds for sometime online. Genesis Project though have found a slightly later preview in 2025 with flying and enemies.
Hedning gave GTW the heads up and reveals that development stalled in 1989, and was an old game project by bas of wwe-trc. We know little more than that at the moment. If you know anything more about the development, please do get in touch.
For now, check out the previews for yourself – a very early glimpse of what could have been a promising game.
GTW’s Andrew Fisher commented that when interviewing Shaun, he was fairly certain that the game was never released – but that he remembered finishing it on the C64. It is hoped that perhaps Shaun may still have something of it and that we can look to preserve it in the future – especially as we have previously preserved Andrew Morris’ work.
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