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 since 1999.
Please Browse our archive and discover the many entries that we host for many different platforms.
Games That Weren’t is a freely ran project, 100% non-profitable and done in our own free time. To ensure minimum downtime, storing vast amounts of scans, downloads and information we have to pay for our hosting.
UPDATE! – We have raised all our funds for 2016/17 – many thanks to everyone who contributed. Full details of who contributed can be found on our Donation page.
Please note that donations only cover our hosting/domain costs, and that we remain a purely non-profit project. Each year we will try and raise money to cover our costs. Once we hit our target, no more donations will be accepted. If donations go slightly over the amount, then this will contribute towards our PC drive and Kyroflux purchase for the archive.
Been a while, but here is a new update with a brand new game release, and a digest of updates that have happened since the 27th February.
Evil Garden fully recovered and released today
Thanks to Lenny Bronstein for highlighting originally and the coder Lutz Vieweg, we are proud to present the long lost C64 conversion of Evil Garden by Demonware. Intended for release in 1989, but the risk not taken due to possibly poor Amiga sales. It’s an interesting Centipede clone with some lovely samples and features worth checking out!
Some great news, but John Darnell (developer of the Kane series, Jet Set Willy 2, Dragon’s Lair and many others) has decided to resurrect his long lost Sleepwalker game that was originally meant for Software Projects.
The game was in development just before JSW2, and the latter game features elements from Sleepwalker – but never got to see the light of day as you can read in the above link to the original GTW64 entry. Sadly the original game is completely lost now, so John is starting again from scratch – with input from Trevor Storey (graphics) and Vanja Utne (music).
It’s looking promising, and hopefully this long lost game will make it in some shape or form at long last! You can follow developments and how John is getting on at the page below:
Below is a digest of recent additions and updates that have been made since the last update, including a new release game!
Captain Fizz V1 recovered and released!
A very odd entry into the GTW64 database, with what seems to be a practically complete conversion of Captain Fizz, but by a different coder. Scrapped likely due to the slow down issues and re-started by another dev. Enjoy!
Before and since the recovery of the infamous Sigue Sigue Sputnik from oblivion, we wanted to always learn more about the game via its creator, Tony (Gibbo) Gibson. Attempts had been in vain though sadly.
Collect seaweed and throw at famous politicians – Seaside Special, political themed gaming at its best!
Mark Harrison popped up early this year though, and we both shared notes to try and find Tony. We both found a YouTube channel (with a number of music remixes) and other pages which Tony had created, which hadn’t been updated since around 2012. Sadly our initial fears were confirmed when Mark Harrison got hold of Tony’s son a few weeks ago. Tony very sadly passed away in 2013 after a battle with cancer.
Well, after an entertaining 2015 – the work continues. We begin 2016 with some quick new entries and a bunch of updates to some existing titles. Sadly nothing new to play, but that will change soon. Watch this space!
Mystery solving has been something we’ve been doing for years now, though there are many times that we hit dead ends and just cannot progress any further. Solving the mystery of who the 80’s development group “Softeam” were exactly is of those dead ends that we have recently hit.
So where did 2015 go? Only feels like the other month I was doing last years special update :) It’s been a massive year, with one of the most important lost C64 games finally found amongst one of our most busiest years – and yet there is still plenty more to find and are continuing to be found!
We hope you all have a great holiday and new year, and we’ll see you again in 2016 with more discoveries (of which we have some brilliant ones lined up!). But for now, enjoy today’s offerings:
Sigue Sigue Sputnik found
The legendary (and almost thought to be mythical) title has been found in believed to be its final state. This long lost Tony Gibson game is pretty wacky and sadly never got picked up by any publishers at the time to be completed.
Richard Bayliss has fixed up Video Images’ Urban Warrior game, so that it is now as originally intended. Complete with linked loading screen, map fix and music.
Ash and Dave were working on a few titles that didn’t get very far at all. For most, we have managed to find some graphic assets which you can check out for the following:
A glitch fixed edition, and what is the very final edition of the game has been recovered and added to the rest of the Nuker versions that have been recovered previously
Firstly, a new Flimbo’s Quest V1 entry has been added with a slightly different title screen, game movement and sfx. Also the proper C64 files for the Flimbos Quest 2 tunes have been added.
Part of our digital preservation work with Ashley Routledge’s disks, has been to find any unreleased demos or graphics by the duo. This page gives an overview of what has been found so far, which you can download for yourself.
As a larger part of general preservation work over a series of collections, we have extracted a number of lost music, Compunet demos, graphics and other pieces of interest – which are not really GTW material, but things you may find interesting.
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.