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.
Thanks to The Bird Sanctuary for highlighting this attempt at an official conversion of Super Mario Bros.
This was to be a proper conversion, started in mid-1987 by Gary Liddon (code) and Gary Penn (graphics). They essentially recreated the entire first level on the C64, and trying to get as accurate as possible according to the C64’s limitations. Maybe Great Giana Sisters had inspired them?
Once complete, they began to show it around – and eventually Firebird took an interesti n the game. Colin Fuidge was very impressed with the work, and so contacted Nintendo to try and get a licence deal.
Everything went pear-shaped though when Nintendo made legal threats, and instructions were very clear – “Cease and Desist” and “Destroy everthing” – which both Gary’s apparently recall to this day.
So that was it – was the game actually completely destroyed? We are guessing so, as it no doubt would have surfaced by now like Tyger Tyger did. Would have been great to see how close it really was!
Get your magnified glass out, as our next entry is one which you may think is a released game, but it isn’t quite – unless you look very closely!
Captain Fizz was a cool 2 player split screen Gauntlet-style game that was released by Psyclapse in 1989 that did ok, but wasn’t too ground breaking. It was developed by Clockwize as one of their early titles.
However, unbeknownst to many was that Captain Fizz was initially fully converted over to the C64 in a few weeks by Craig Wight, just before he left Clockwize. But for reasons as yet unknown, Keith Goodyer re-converted the entire game – which ended up as the final release.
In early 2016, Dean Hickingbottom very kindly dug out Craig’s original version of the game – and you can now play it for the first time. But you may struggle to notice many differences – as the conversions were very close! Keith may well have used the same layouts as Craig, but just re-wrote the engine behind it. In Craig’s version, the graphics are a little lighter in places and on colour – where clearly Dean had made minor improvements afterwards.
Craig’s version also notably suffers from heavy slowdown at times when it gets very busy, which could actually be the reason why Keith chose to start again with the game. The level layouts seem to be identical, and we believe that this is actually a complete conversion – just missing music by David Whittaker (only SFX present).
Hopefully we may fully learn soon why Craig’s version didn’t make the cut – but here it is, as a very nice curiosity to take a look at. Let us know if you spot any major differences!
A very short entry for now, for a title that was being heavily considered for the C64, according to a review by C+VG.
Star Goose was a vertical scrolling shoot-em-up, looking a little like Xenon, and with a 3D segment at particular stages of the game. It was released on the ST, Amiga and PC – but the possible C64 release was never to be.
We’re not quite sure if anything was ever started, or if it was merely just a plan to do a C64 conversion. Hopefully someone can help shed some light?
BooBer was to be a new C64 platformer game, where you would control a teddy bear main character. It was first started in 2011 by Andrew Bourhill of Apophis Games.
It was to be a two directional scrolling platformer – similar in style it seems to Mayhem in Monsterland.
The basic story is that Boo has got lost in nursery land whilst on a picnic with his parents and you must help Boo return safely home. Of course nothing is ever so simple, Nursery land is also inhabited by some fairly evil nasties intent on harming Boo.
Over the weeks/months the game was in production, title screen, high score and disk loaders were complete. Music was produced by Joachim Wijnhoven as well. A traditional method of scrolling was chosen over VSP, and speed was achieved by using self modifying code. This was ditched and a $d011 scroll was used instead, where multi-directional scrolling was now possible.
It sounded like the main character was controllable on the first level produced, and slope work was being carried out – then everything went dead. Joachim asked us to find out what had happened to Andrew, but there was nothing we could find online.
Years passed, and then in early 2016 – Andrew resurfaced, with a new Flashback C64 conversion. BooBer it seems had sadly been lost in a disk crash, and then that coupled with real life – things were put on the back burner. Now things have settled, Andrew hopes to get a proper conversion of Flashback sorted on the C64.
As for BooBer – there is chance that something could be salvaged from the disk crash – but its looking unlikely, and now there are only screenshots to check out.
Thanks for the heads up from Jazzcat – Starfighter One was a game that was mentioned in Danish Magazine IC RUN Nov/Dec 1988.
It was briefly mentioned as being developed, from a newsletter from Starvision’s owner Ivan Sølvason.
Sadly there was no actual info about the games, so this is merely a placeholder until we get more information. Anonymous Contributor though found a note in mid-1987 in Danish magazine SOFT which suggested that the company was more or less going to be an Amiga company according to Sören Grönbech, the founder:
“In the future, Starvision will focus mostly on the Amiga, although we may produce an occasional 64 title every now and then. All our full-time programmers have bought Amigas, and we’re 100% devoted to it. Our first game, MACH, is for the 64, but the next one is Amiga-only. It is called Gigaball”. [NOTE: Gigaball was released as Giganoid]
So it is quite possible that Starfighter One was only an Amiga based title. In the meantime, do you know anything more?
Thanks for the heads up from Jazzcat – Super Elite was a game that was mentioned in Danish Magazine IC RUN Nov/Dec 1988.
It was briefly mentioned as being developed, from a newsletter from Starvision’s owner Ivan Sølvason.
Sadly there was no actual info about the games, so this is merely a placeholder until we get more information. Anonymous Contributor though found a note in mid-1987 in Danish magazine SOFT which suggested that the company was more or less going to be an Amiga company according to Sören Grönbech, the founder:
“In the future, Starvision will focus mostly on the Amiga, although we may produce an occasional 64 title every now and then. All our full-time programmers have bought Amigas, and we’re 100% devoted to it. Our first game, MACH, is for the 64, but the next one is Amiga-only. It is called Gigaball”. [NOTE: Gigaball was released as Giganoid]
So it is quite possible that Super Elite was only an Amiga based title. In the meantime, do you know anything more?
Thanks for the heads up from Jazzcat – Super Pinball was a game that was mentioned in Danish Magazine IC RUN Nov/Dec 1988.
It was briefly mentioned as being developed, from a newsletter from Starvision’s owner Ivan Sølvason.
Sadly there was no actual info about the games, so this is merely a placeholder until we get more information. Anonymous Contributor though found a note in mid-1987 in Danish magazine SOFT which suggested that the company was more or less going to be an Amiga company according to Sören Grönbech, the founder:
“In the future, Starvision will focus mostly on the Amiga, although we may produce an occasional 64 title every now and then. All our full-time programmers have bought Amigas, and we’re 100% devoted to it. Our first game, MACH, is for the 64, but the next one is Amiga-only. It is called Gigaball”. [NOTE: Gigaball was released as Giganoid]
So it is quite possible that Super Pinball was only an Amiga based title. In the meantime, do you know anything more?
Thanks for the heads up from Jazzcat – Twin Ranger was a game that was mentioned in Danish Magazine IC RUN Nov/Dec 1988.
It was briefly mentioned as being developed, from a newsletter from Starvision’s owner Ivan Sølvason.
Shortly after the finding, it seems only an Amiga edition was in the planning stages. The game had 3D effects and other features which seemed to sound like a 16-bit title. Even that is missing though, so the details have been forwarded onto the Amiga GTW team.
We’re probably stretching things I know – but its been reported that there was a version of Gemini Wing in existance that had two players in total.
Zzap 64 reported it a month before the game’s review and release, where it was dropped back to 1 player only.
It was probably just due to too much sprite flicker, but it would be very interesting to find that version. Maybe there were other features dropped as well?
Sadly we may never find out, as we believe that the author – Carl Wade, passed away a while ago. It could be something that turns up someday by bizare circumstances, but unlikely!
A short entry for a title that was flagged up thanks to Ross Sillifant.
Gung-Ho! was a title that was drawn up and story-boarded by Tim Best, which was set in the jungle and lots of shooting. Activision managed to see what Tim was proposing, and liked what they saw.
Recently at the time, Activision had got the Predator licence, and got System 3 to code the game. Tim changed some of the specifics to fit the new brief.
But what of the original game? Was anything ever started of Gung-Ho!, or was this just a series of story boards produced initially? It seems it could be that way – as Predator was outsourced (excuse the pun!) to Source development studios, who did a few bits and bobs for Activision. Had Gung-ho! already been started, surely System 3 would have finished the development work for Activision?
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.
