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.
A quick entry for a title by Uruguayan development group Iron Byte, called Buggy Ranger.
The game was released by Dinamic on the likes of the Amstrad CPC, Spectrum and MSX and was a sort of ATV clone with very large buggies in a desolate city scape. It was ok as a game, but nothing too special overall.
The C64 version wasn’t advertised in the adverts, but the Spanish instructions included Commodore 64 loading instructions. So did anything exist? Or was the addition a mistake by the company at the time? Interestingly, cartridge instructions are also listed – so if it did exist, it would have been a GS title as well!
It was confirmed by Pablo Ruiz that no C64 version was started due to a lack of interest. So it is very much a …
A quick new entry for what Freddy Hardest 2 should have been originally, in the form of “Katia” by Iron Byte, a Uruguayan development team.
The Freddy Hardest 2 game (known to many as Guardian Angel from Codemasters) originally featured a female protagonist, but was switched over to a Freddy Hardest sequel to meet the request of Dinamic, who Iron Byte were working closely with.
It begs the question as to whether anything still exists of the original game with the original character, and if maybe there was more content that was cut when turned into the Freddy Hardest game.
It was confirmed that only a Spectrum version was developed, and a C64 version was never started.
Yet another Codemasters title that never was. This time, Codemasters put out an advert in a magazine – giving rates for conversions of their titles to other platforms.
Transmuter was listed, with a £2500 bounty to convert from the Spectrum to the C64. Other titles listed were Pro Snooker Simulator, Ghost Hunters and Grand Prix Simulator.
We are guessing that someone must have taken on the project – but who was it, and what happened to it? The game itself was relatively simple and wouldn’t have been too complicated to convert. Maybe sales were bad that they decided to can it?
The game was also later converted to the Atari – so its likely something could be out there still.
As with Mag Max, it seems that there was another conversion in the works for Breakthru, which saw a terrible release on the C64 in the end by US Gold.
Canvas were working on a Breakthru conversion for US Gold, but for reasons currently unknown, it was abandoned. Ironically, both Mag Max and Breakthru in their release versions – featured music by Fred Gray!
Graphics were being handled by Pete Graylish, who had produced various graphics on the C64 – including the loading screen to Miami Vice.
He unfortunately couldn’t recall anything about the conversion or what happened, but did provide this rare unfinished loading screen. Maybe the game was cancelled very early on perhaps?
A very short entry, for a very controversial title.
Commando Libya had a simple aim of just gunning people down as they went across the screen. It caused a bit of an outcry on the C64 scene due to the bonus level in particular, where you shoot people against a wall.
The full title of the first game was Commando Libya Part 1, which suggests there should have been a second part to the game. This was never released though, so we are wondering perhaps if the game got canned after the reception to the first part?
Freebooter was a strategy title that was in production by Paul Clansey, just before he started working at Active Minds. It was actually submitted as a playable demo to EA at the time.
The game had you running programmable robot war on a mining asteroid. The player controls a freebooter, who has a squad of droids. After landing on an asteroid, he has about 10 minutes to hijack as much ore as possible before the megacorps fighter groups respond.
You could buy and construct different droids to help you complete your task, and the game would have come with different view points represented by 4 visual windows. More details from Paul can be found under “Creator Speaks”.
The game was only 30-40% complete and had no publisher in the end (where EA presumably turned down the project). It got cancelled when Paul went to work for Active Minds and went to work on the likes of Gazza 2.
In 2016, Paul was sorting out his notes and materials to help with a magazine interview, when he uncovered a disk of a demo sent to EA at the time. This was sent to GTW and fully preserved, and now with Paul’s permission we are able to present the final version of the game as it stood. Load the main file, and enter SYS2304 to start.
At the moment, we don’t fully understand what it is you have to do or what all the controls are, but Paul will hopefully shed some more light soon when he’s had chance to play through and work things out again. It does indeed look like a promising strategy game, and could have been a success considering Paul’s work on Alien.
More soon, but enjoy a piece of history preserved…
Mythos was a title that was in production by Paul Clansey whilst at Imagine Software. The game was caught up in the crash of the company and was lost on the Sage system hard-drive when it was taken away by the bailiffs. It was only 10% complete.
It was done mostly off of Paul’s own back, as Imagine were clearly in trouble at the time and Paul was doing the game to keep productive.
The game would have been a horizontal and vertically scrolling platform adventure game, where the platforms were floating fragments of rock. The main character was a swordsman, who could get onto a winged horse to fly between fragments.
Each fragment would be based on a different mythos, such as ancient Egypt, Greek or the world of Conan the Barbarian. Only the player character animation survived, and can be found in Time Trax (also by Paul)
See creator speaks for more details about the game from Paul.
A short entry for a title that was briefly listed as coming soon on the back of another released game.
Karate was one of a series of games from KAB Software, which seems to stand for Kevin A Burk software. Kevin developed all of the games with his own company, and Karate was to follow a 3D Boxing game, along with a Wrestling game.
The Wrestling game did actually see a release – so we are unsure as to why the Karate game never made it. Was it even started, and is there actually a full copy out there to be found?
After the successful Alien game developed for Argus Press, it seemed inevitable that the same company could have developed the sequel.
Sure enough, developer of the original game, Paul Clansey confirmed that he had started an outline design of Aliens for Argus Press, as they already had a relationship with 20th Century Fox via the original game.
Paul was provided with an early draft of the script (typewritten by James Cameron himself, with his own humorous commentary included – according to Paul).
Sadly, Paul’s version was never to get started in terms of code – as Electric Dreams/Activision snuck in and got the licence from under Argus Press’ noses.
So there is nothing to find of this movie licence, but maybe some day something of Paul’s original design proposal could surface. Stranger things have happened!
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