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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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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