Unreleased & Cancelled Video Games across many platforms.
Welcome to Games That Weren't!
We are an Unreleased and Cancelled 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 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 video game history since 1999.
I’ve been chatting to two guys called Simon and Ekkehard, who used to develop a lot of Vic 20 games back in the day.
In recent times, they had tried to recover their long lost work – but were having troubles doing so. Ekkehard finally got hold of a Vic 20 recently and managed to get his and Simon’s works preserved.
For more details and downloads for Simon’s game ‘Dudu’ and all of Ekkehard’s currently preserved works, check out the following links:
Thanks to Stoo Cambridge for passing on his last remaining copy for preservation, Battle Ball has been finally recovered and released. This was due to be released on the Power House label, but sadly went under before it could be sold. Grab it from here:
We are pleased to announce that Games That Weren’t will have a display at Play Blackpool this 3rd and 4th May.
In collaboration with Andy Brown of Replay Events, we have helped pick a number of games for various consoles and computers which never saw a commercial release and will be available for people to play and check out.
Another GTW64 update which features a new entry thanks to Mark Wilson, and a set of tunes intended for the game. In addition – Arbitrator has had a set of tunes submitted by Mark which were also intended for the game.
Finally Ian Coog has provided SID tune rips for both Castle Boy and Starburst (as well as Arbitrator just moments ago), which we have added to all entries.
Thanks to Mark Wilson, the GEMS compilation pack has been digitally preserved, which includes 2 previously unreleased full games and also a far more complete version of Starburst (with previously unheard tunes by Andy Brown). This update also includes a new entry and a few updates thrown in to boot!
Two full titles found and preserved from GEMS collection
The latest issue of the free C64 fanzine, RESET has been released, which features a new regular Games That Weren’t section. This month covering Genesis’ Spellcast game.
GTW recently had an email from Andy Swann, who was one of the key programmers at Twilight back in the early 90’s, and one of the lead developers of the cool Alfred Chicken on the Amiga.
Andy has been attempting to find his old disks, and at Christmas found three disks. One blank, one with an early demo version of Alfred Chicken (Amiga) and another (and exciting!) early demo of an aborted title called Frog Dude on the Sega Megadrive.
Firstly, Alfred Chicken’s demo is believed to be a ECTS demo with some differences from the final game (including a different picture of Alfred Chicken, different game palette and no sound effects). A nice curiosity!
Frog Dude is a title which we don’t believe has been heard about before. It was prototyped around the same time as Alfred Chicken, but wasn’t quite as strong a title – hence development was stopped before it could be touted to any publishers. Andy was the lead developer, whilst Peter Tattersall was on graphics. Andy’s agent, John Cook, had come in and said that the Frog Dude title was “workman-like” and suggested they didn’t bother with finishing it. Andy then went on to port Alfred Chicken to the Gameboy instead.
As you can see from the various screenshots, the game takes some visual cues from Super Mario World, as the guys at the time were very taken by the game. The game allows you to swap between a mace wielding prince and a frog with a large tongue. There are some nice cartoony graphics, including a small animated sequence at the start – but no sound in place.
Thanks very much to Andy, he has allowed us to share both the Alfred Chicken demo and Frog Dude with you all. So feel free to download and run in your favorite emulator and take a look in particular at what could have been a British take on Super Mario World!
Keeping up the trend, some more new entries and various updates have been added.
This includes news of another Psygnosis conversion that never was, an interesting Club Light game, a selection of John Vanderaart entries, some newly recovered Duncan Kershaw games, confirmation that a cartridge version of Spy Who Loved Me did exist, David Doll speaks to GTW64 about the Virus April fools and much more. Enjoy!
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.
