Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
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 very short entry for a potential conversion of a popular Amiga game by Microstyle.
USER magazine back in October 1990 had listed the C64 version as being one of the available formats, so was this true at all?
We’ve heard rumors that USER magazine wasn’t a reputable source of information, so its very likely that this conversion is vapourware. Sean Connolly’s tune was not an official tune either, but just a conversion done for fun.
Can anyone confirm?
Thanks to Jarrod Bentley, we have learnt about yet another Codemasters title that was never released on the C64 – and making the original Commodore Scene story in 1996/97 about there being 22 unreleased Codemasters games looking more and more true.
Fresh from completing Crystal Kingdom Dizzy, Fists of Fury was to be a new Visual Impact title for the C64, Amiga and MegaDrive – and specifically a Streets of Rage clone of sorts. It was discussed originally towards the end of writing Crystal Kingdom Dizzy – so in preparation for a visit to Codemasters to see Dizzy in its final play testing, Jarrod got some hero sprites animated on the C64 (and some concept sprites for the 16-bit versions). Fists of Fury also required a licence for the title from the Bruce Lee Foundation, though it may not have directly been related in terms of characters.
At this point, Dave Thompson was working at Codies as a projects manager – but still wanted Jarrod and Craig Kelsall to run Visual Impact as a development studio. Craig worked at Leamington Spa to get familiar with 16-bit development, but Jarrod didn’t want to make the move and moved onto pastures new.
Jarrod isn’t too sure what happened next, but it is possible that no actual code was started and the project didn’t get off the ground after Visual Impact broke up. We’re currently chatting to Dave and Craig to get their input. Jarrod doesn’t believe that a lack of a C64 version would have been down to the dwindling market, as back around the time of Crystal Kingdom Dizzy, the C64 was still reasonably buoyant to warrent new titles being written for it.
Hopefully some day Jarrod may find his sprite work, but its unlikely and we’ll just have to imagine what this Streets of Rage clone could have been like. Watch this space!
Go Karts was a game that sadly was never going to happen.
Coder Ze Smasher had created 4 disksides of a game – but only with mostly graphics and only about 1% coding for a title screen. No code was ever started, though some unfinished backgrounds do exist.
This was a title started way back in 1991, with the aim of giving the game to Magic Disk to publish. The idea of the game was to have some tracks with a top down view, close to BMX Simulator by Codemasters – but with 2 go karts instead of bicycles.
Sadly the game never progressed past the title screen. We hope to show a digital version of this sometime soon, along with hopefully some previous unheard Guy Shavitt tunes perhaps? Well, Ze Smasher confirms the tunes will be used in an intro in the near future!
Watch this space!
Dragonstone may likely be a title you’ve never heard of or played – mainly due to how it was mail-order only text adventure title (likely written in Graphic Adventure Creator, not Quill as I originally suggested). Thanks to Marco (Exile) Das for flagging this up!
When you ordered the first game, you would have been sent a special introductory offer, where you could get £1 taken off the price for the sequel.
We’re not entirely sure if anyone sent off the voucher and got their sequel though – and currently the game is very much at large still. Maybe you have a copy somewhere?
It’s still early days, but we believe that as it was sold by a school – people would have either got their game or would have been reimbursed. Do you know anything more?
Contributor Strident commented: “St. Kevin’s in Kirkby (near Liverpool) was one of the biggest Comprehensive [Secondary] schools in the UK at the time. It’s interesting that this ‘Alexander Software’ placed several adverts in Zzap… Was it a teacher behind it? A computer club?”
It seems quite likely – hopefully a former pupil or even the teacher themselves may stumble across this page in the future to help shed some light and see if this sequel can be digitally preserved.
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!
Pubjumper Mario was described by Jeremy as a Popeye clone, featuring a large bouncer in Bluto’s role. For years it was lost, but in March 2021 – it was released by Army of Darkness and found by Black Beard.
Yet another long lost title found that you can finally play thanks to their efforts, and yet another unreleased game case closed! Check it out!
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!
For now, watch this space for any new findings!
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.
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