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.

Latest News and Posts

Quantarallax

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

An interesting game demo finding on Ashley Routledge’s disks recently came in the shape of Quantarallax, which is an early Delta sort of clone that never seemed to get released.

The game was developed by Quantum Designs, who consisted of Richard (Froodle) Hawkins and Shane (Chain) Mussell for this particular project. We are not sure if it was intended to try and get a publisher.

It probably ended up with Ash and Dave, as Richard was from the Eastbourne area where Ash and Dave were based at the time, and used to speak to them a lot.

This preview also seems to be very early and just allows you to shoot loads of ships and not much else. Did it ever get much further than this?

We hope to hear from both Richard and Shane soon about the game, so watch this space! For now, here is the demo that was found.

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Jupple Dust

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Thanks to Jazzcat for the heads up about this game, which was shown recently on the developer’s website.

The idea of the game was to get all of the fruit on the level, but whilst not opening the cage with the monster. The cage could not be opened though, as it was never finished (and for reasons we do not yet know). We assume it would have been published by someone like 64’er.

The game had about 20 levels completed, a level editor and two players- but was missing gameplay elements to fully round it off.

The game was fixed up and released by Laxity in late 2016, so go and check it out now from the downloads!

An interesting looking title that never quite made it

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 3 Comments

Onion Yupy

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Thanks to Jazzcat for the heads up about this game, which was shown recently on the developer’s website.

We are not sure what the exact aim of the game was and why it was never finished – but we assume it would have been published by someone like 64’er. It looks like it was some kind of platformer, and the description suggest it was a horizontal soft scroller.

Unfortunately there is nothing playable of the game yet available, though some screenshots have been shared. If anything gets added by Marcus, we’ll try and bring it here for you to download.

An interesting looking title that never quite made it.

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Paratron

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Thanks to Jazzcat for the heads up about this game, which was shown recently on the developer’s website.

The game was a computer based board game, which included a level editor. The game could be played with up to four players. We assume it would have been published by someone like 64’er. It looks pretty cool, so we are unsure why it never quite got finished.

Unfortunately there is nothing playable of the game yet available, though some screenshots have been shared. If anything gets added by Marcus, we’ll try and bring it here for you to download.

An interesting looking title that never quite made it.

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Girl Guard

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Thanks to Jazzcat for the heads up about this game, which was shown recently on the developer’s website.

The game was a RPG title, with a large world with 16 different countries, 32 dungeons, four different breeds, elaborate, personal character creation, 20 pieces of music, more than 100 items and seemingly endless number of adventures. Well, as Marcus explains – this was only on paper and was too much to get sorted.

Graphics, music were all done – but the code was not! However, Marcus very kindly shared the work so far on his website, and which you can download from here.

We assume that the game was being touted to publishers at the time, but we’re not sure who exactly. We hope to find out more soon from the developer himself.

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Wizerior 2

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Thanks to Jazzcat for the heads up about this game, which was shown recently on the developer’s website.

The game was a sequel to a Gauntlet clone which was actually released by Markt & Technik in 1989. This clone though actually looks a lot more like Gauntlet in terms of graphics!

This late title from 1991 was mostly there, but with just 20 levels – we are not sure why it was cancelled – but assume it was due to moving onto the Amiga platform.

The game was fixed up and released by Laxity in late 2016, so go and check it out now from the downloads!

We hope to find out more soon from the developer himself.

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Yloa

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Thanks to Jazzcat for the heads up about this game, which was shown recently on the developer’s website.

The game was an RPG which was looking to shape up pretty well back in 1986 when it was in development. However, for reasons as yet unknown – the game was never finished and released.

We assume that the title would have been published by 64’er had it been finished.

Thanks to Marcus, the remains of the game was made available for people to check out – which we have also added here.

We hope to find out more soon from the developer himself.

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Firefighter Mario

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

A surprise finding on the disks of Darren Melbourne, with an unofficial and early Mario game from 1983 which has been lost for some time!

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 Pubjumper Mario. They were written for 4K cartridges, hence were very simple affairs!

Firefighter Mario is a Vanguard clone, with Mario in a firetruck – having to put out fireball enemies, and then destroy a large flame on top of a building. The game scrolls in a variety of directions, just like Vanguard. It’s not the best game in the world, but for 1983 and 4K, you cannot really complain!

Hopefully Jeremy will get in touch some day – sadly Pubjumper Mario is still missing, but at least one more of the trio is now safe!

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Little Knight Arthur

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Thanks to contributor Aki Sivula, we learnt about a recently recovered game by a chap called Pasi Hytonen – who after starting off by developing games for the Oric, before then moving onto the C64.

His first project was a neat platformer called Little Knight Arthur, which was produced in his spare time whilst at high school. The game was developed from between 1985 and 86, and could well have been a commercial release.

Sadly Pasi never released the game to anyone, but he went on to do games such as Uuno Turhapuro muuttaa maalle for Amersoft and Number Bumper.

It wasn’t until November 2015, that Pasi had help preserving the game. The game has now been released in early 2016 for all of you to see for the first time.

It’s a rock hard game, but a lot of fun – and its a shame it never got a full audience back in the day. But the main thing is that it is safe now, and many of you will get the chance to enjoy Pasi’s work.

For the full and excellent story about Pasi’s early work and how the game came about, check out his blog post here and more details about the release here.

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Beatle Quest – Parts Two and Three

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Beatle Quest is one of those titles which attracts a lot of attention due to its Beatles links, but also the price that the game regularly seems to attract on Ebay.

Thanks to Asphodel, we learn from the adverts for the original game that there were actually meant to be two more parts, named after songs by the Beatles:

A day in the life (part 2)

and

Across the Universe

Sadly neither part seems to have ever seen the light of day. We guess that sales of the first part were so poor, that Number 9 software (nothing to do with Level 9 before you ask, and a Beatles reference) closed its doors before either of them could be sold.

We got hold of Garry, who tells us that in the beginning – it was always his intention to produce a trilogy. As a result, he started Beatle Quest in/around 1983/84 – when at the time he had the one son (born in 1982). The game was finished and released in 1985, but the other titles got caught up in real life when Garry’s next son Alex was born and his full time teaching job took over. It wasn’t really to do with any lack of sales.

‘A Day in the Life, Part 2′, was actually started – where there are print outs of locations and objects in existance – but this was as far as it got! The game was set after Beatle Quest and the object would have been to collect items of Beatles’ memorabilia from the same/but changed by time, locations. As Garry describes – “A bit Dystopian like!”

At the time, Garry was starting to get clever with The Quill and had lots of versions of the same object, depending on what had happened, different descriptions, plus loads of Beatles related quotes and ‘stuff’. Garry believes it may have been harder for non-Beatlepeople.

Garry described ‘Across the Universe’ as being set in the ‘far-flung-future’, following similar lines of Beatles related places (I’ll remember), in my life, where we’d all ‘work it out’. As a result of the second part not being finished, nothing of this 3rd part was ever started and was just a series of ideas.

Garry hopes to some day find some of the bits and pieces relating to the second part though and get them scanned in for us to include on the website. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that parts of this long lost trilogy can be saved. For now, Garry has very kindly sent us a copy of the proposed cover for Part 2, which looks superb!

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