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 online since 1999, and long before that offline.
Please Browse our archive and discover the many entries that we host for many different platforms.
The Horsekiller is a game by Robert Olessak, which is an unfinished sequel to his game called The Galleon.
Sadly, only an intro was developed for the game – but an impressive intro it is! Maybe the programmer had ran out of steam after doing the intro? We hope to find out soon.
The game would likely have been in the same style as The Galleon, with a full graphic text adventure that would have looked very polished. Based on the intro, we can only imagine how good the game would have been – and its a shame that it never quite made it!
Hopefully we will find out a little more about the plans for the game and why it was abandoned, but for now – check out the preview and accompanying notes in the download below. You can also read more about the game on the author’s website here: http://istennyila.hu/eng/game/0006/0000.htm#02
Many people who grew up in the 1980’s and the UK will remember the late Bob Monkhouse, who was the game show and comedy king for many decades. He was so famous, that not even the C64 could escape his face.
Bob’s Full House was part of a series of game show adaptations on the C64 and was developed by Binary Design for Domark in 1988.
It was recovery of a series of Charles Deenen tunes in 2014, which first game the suggestion that there was a different version of the game in existence. GTW had missed the A&D reference in the music demos though…
Come August 2015, GTW picked up the disks of Ashley Routledge to preserve. When flipping through quickly with Ash and Dave, they pull out a disk labelled “Bob’s Full House gfx disk” and come out with “Wow, I had forgotten all about that one! Never got too far!”
Basically, pretty might straight after Double Dragon was completed for Binary Design, they were offered the chance to work on Bob’s Full House. They agreed, and made a small start – getting Charles Deenen signed up to do music as well after his recent work on Double Dragon. However, a week or so of work – the duo were not really feeling it for the game and were getting pretty bored of it. Ash says that they decided to walk away from the production and go onto other more interesting titles instead.
Unfortunately it seems that anything that may have been executable has been lost – this is one backup from Dave that Ash never had. However, all of Ash’s work on the game can be found here for the first time – showing some cool looking graphics for the game, which is VERY different to the eventual release. There is a small character routine, which we believe was developed for the game – but this was it!
A cool glimpse at what could have been a neat early Ash and Dave game.
A surprise title next to put into the GTW archives – but one where sadly we may never see the full potential.
Croc was to be a very very late title on the C64 from Ash and Dave – approximately 1993 time we believe, and when they were busy already working on Micro Machines for the Sega Master System.
Not a huge amount is known about the game, apart from that it was looking to be a sort of Zoom clone by the looks of things, with a Croc as the main character.
When filtering through Ashley Routledge’s disks, we found some source code and some graphics – but when compiled thanks to Martin Pugh – there was little more than a short routine to show the main grid drop down (which looks great!). This seems to be pretty much it – and it was from one of Dave Saunders’ last backups from PDS.
Hopefully soon, we will hear more about the game and what the plans for it. Was it a new title intended for Codemasters? Was cancellation due to moving on finally from the C64?
We hope to find out soon – but for now, check out a short glimpse of the early work stages of the game.
An early unofficial Mario game which was done in early 1983. At the moment , we do not know for sure if this game actually got released – but Jeremy Thorne’s other game – Mario’s Brewery was released in 1983, without official Nintendo endorsement.
Thanks to a blog post here, we learn from the comments that Jeremy was just 14 when he wrote the game, and was part of a series of three titles, including Mario’s Brewery and Firefighter Mario (which we digitally preserved in December 2015). They were written for 4K cartridges, hence were very simple affairs!
Cavey is a brand new title which we had never heard about until Dean Hickingbottom sent us a disk with some graphics on, showing early sprite sheets. Load each file and enter SYS 2070 to display.
The title was a post-Clockwize development that was being worked on by David Bradley – and was to be a caveman platform game.
We guess that the date of the game would be approximately 1992 time and was apparently shaping up well, with some test levels. Dean suggests it was a bit “Kings Valley” from what he recalls. Sadly it was never finished – most likely due to the dwindling C64 market at the time.
A nice early glimpse which we hope something more could be saved in the future! We hope to hear from David about the game sometime soon!
Ok, i’m at the risk of stretching things a bit too much – but I thought it would be a nice inclusion into the archive to show a slightly different preview of Flimbo’s Quest. Ah well, sod it! :)
This fairly late preview includes a very different title screen, and a slightly slower main character and sfx in places. There have been previews of the game out there before, but not one with differences like this from what I could find. I hope you find it interesting anyway!
The final game was of course released, and was even featured as a pack-in title for the C64GS on cartridge. It was a nice and cute Hawkeye clone which was very enjoyable.
Molecale was to be an arcade shoot-em-up to hopefully be finished by Video Images back around 1988/89 time.
The name of the game was coined by Wayne Sheardown, who was originally part of the Video Images gang of four – but he dropped out before the company was properly started. Sadly Molecale was never actually coded at all, and only exists as a set of example screens. The game was also planned for the ZX Spectrum.
The in-game was to be a sort of R-Type clone, but you could also choose the sector to play and trade with aliens to upgrade your ship.
Dean Hickingbottom has successfully managed to find what seem to be all of the mockup screens by David Bradley, showing the level selection, high score, in-game examples and possible title picture. Its a nice glimpse of what could have been, but sadly we will never see the game in full action!
TRIVIA: The swirl stars from the Molecale title picture were later used on the Exceleron loading screen.
Not really known for sports games, unless you count Slicks, Ashley Routledge (and possibly Dave Saunders) was working on a Tennis game around the early 90’s.
A set of graphics showing a tennis court were discovered on Ash’s disks in 2015, but at the moment we are not sure if they were developed for someone else to implement a game or if this was to be a title constructed by Ash and Dave as a Digital Design release. We hope to confirm that soon.
For now, we believe that this could have actually been the basis of Pete Sampras Tennis on the C64. Maybe even a late 1993 title. Ash actually developed the Game Gear edition for Codemasters, so it is possible!
Overall, there isn’t much to see, but it opens up the possibility of yet another title to find. Was it maybe for Codemasters perhaps? Time will tell!
For now, take a look at some of the graphics that we have managed to preserve.
Nope, this is not anything to do with the Gremlin Graphics game by the Core Design team (even though you’ll see, the blue logo looks startlingly like the Gremlin game’s logo) – but this is in fact a completely different game that was in development it seems in the late 80’s by Ash and Dave.
The game was to be a multi-directional scrolling car game, possibly even re-using the engine from Hot Rod. The game was canned fairly early on due to other projects taking priority. We are not sure who the game was intended for, if anyone at all – and its likely the game was to be pitched to publishers.
When preserving Ashley Routledge’s work disks, we found a small demo showing a car sprite as a test (not playable), and also an editor which shows what seems to be a full map. There are also a few logos which were made for the game. Sadly there was nothing playable, so there could be no chance of ever seeing anything that could be played.
In August 2023 at Zzap!Live, Ash and Dave revealed that they had been working on a game called Ferrari Fred, which never got very far at all. Possibly a map, and a small red car with a hi-res overlay. When going back to look at Ash’s disks, we looked at the Switchblade entry which seemed to be the closest match, and sure enough – there in the gallery is a mock up screen with the hi-res overlayed sprite and “Ferrari Fred”
Eventually, the duo came up with a new name of Switchblade, not knowing about Gremlin’s game of the same name, but as we mention above – it never got anywhere further. It looks pretty good overall, and considering how Hot Rod turned out, we’ve no doubt this could have been great.
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