Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
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.
A very short entry which was flagged up by Ross Sillifant, as it was listed within ACE magazine as coming soon for the Spectrum, Amstrad and C64 – even though the adverts suggest that only 16-bit versions were in production.
The game was a strategy game which did ok in the press at the time. It is very likely that ACE got the listings incorrect – but can anyone confirm so that we can close the case?
More soon we hope!
Quite often when doing GTW64, we get a number of shocks and surprises that crop up, and none more than when we found a PDS disk with Tarzan Goes Ape written on it within Ashley Routledge’s disk collection.
Started around the 16th November 1990, then stopped it seems on the 22nd November – not a huge amount was done, but there was at least 1 or 2 levels and a main character that you could sort of control. There are plenty of glitches, as things are really at a very early stage. Use keys Q and A to scroll the map up and down.
It looks great, and although the final released game was pretty good in its own right, you wonder how good this version could have been. The game was indeed being developed by Ash and Dave, but its unknown if it was just Ash or both the duo working on it.
Oddly neither recall anything about the development and were surprised to hear about it. The short time span possibly being a good reason for forgetting. As a result, we don’t know exactly why the game was canned early on – was it maybe a pitch for Codemasters after seeing the Spectrum edition? Did they get a better offer from another company to do another game? We may not ever find out unfortunately.
As mentioned earlier, the game did eventually get a release by a different programmer – around late 1991! So almost a year since the original edition. Here it is if you want to compare.. http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=7774&d=18&h=0
Something certainly happened – maybe you know more?
For now, check out the final remains of the conversion that never was, for a glimpse of a game that could have been very different!
Probably one of the strangest GTW titles i’ve had to enter – but this is no joke, but an actual game which we are trying to recover and may well have been released. It’s just missing, and has been highlighted by contributor Daniel Jonas.
The game is a Giana Sisters construction kit based game with new levels, and although many of the construction kit games that were produced (and there were a few!) were released, this one is still at large.
Sadly Philipp Staender, who has done a sterling job of trying to recover all the games, could not recover the game from his own disks. So this is a call out now to check your disks and help us preserve another piece of C64 history. Do you have it?
For now, here is a link to Philipp’s work…
https://github.com/pstaender/giana-sisters-lost-levels
Jumping Jack was a fantastic game for the 16k ZX Spectrum, and gained many rave reviews at the time from the press.
It comes as no surprise that the game was to be ported across a series of platforms, which included the Commodore 64.
The conversion was just a rumour though, and we need to get a lot more detail about if anything was ever started. The original author, Albert Ball, only took on Spectrum duties – so it may well have been one of Imagine’s internal developers.
Do you know anything more about it?
Our next entry in GTW64 comes in the form of a Pacman clone which would have featured a overweight Batman character.
Here, in true Pacman style fashion – you would walk around a city map eating hamburgers until clearing to progress to the next level.
The game was a Norwegian game that was never finished, and there were two versions of it finished according to Roy Widding. The game was being produced by Geri Tjelta (Music), Rune Spaans (Graphics) and Endre Stølsvik (Code).
The SID’s currently exist in HVSC, though Roy has already dug out a loading picture which you can see here – and we hope to even see a playable version at somepoint in the future. The loading screen we do not know if it is finished or not.
It isn’t yet known why the game was cancelled back in 1990/91 time, but we hope to find out soon!
Please note, but this is not the same game as the Amiga title that was released in 1994… http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=1399
Watch this space for hopefully something playable!
Welcome to hell is a game which does not have a huge amount of information available currently. It was found on the preserved disks of the late Jukka TapanimÁ¤ki with no real context or information about it.
We assume that a friend had given a copy of the preview to Jukka back in the day, and it was swiftly forgotten about. There seems to be no other trace of it online, so it is a crucial finding to ensure at least part of the game has been preserved.
Overall, it is very rough around the edges – looks great, but very frustrating to play with constant deaths at the start. But its a promising title overall. However, did it get any further than this?
We have some basic credits from the game’s title screen, but who are they exactly? And can anyone help shed some more light on this title?
For now, check out the preview of the game!
Ilogical was to be a C64 conversion of a title which has seen release on a variety of platforms, and is a cool Picross clone:
http://computeremuzone.com/ficha.php?id=744&l=en
Sadly the C64 edition was never properly finished. Initially things were very slow by getting info from the Spectrum developer, as he had a very demanding job. Eventually the coder did get the info they needed, but there were other problems mixed in that made development halt.
As a result – for the first time, here are the remains of the title in various builds and bitmaps – which it seems a massive shame was never released. Thanks to Jazzcat for giving the heads up on this game for the archive.
The coder got in touch recently in December 2015, and confirmed that they would like to resume the project some day – but now 5 years has passed, they will have to alter some of the code – due to some routines that need fixing. Sadly he’s confirmed that the latest version of the game was lost, so some work would need to be re-done.
Watch this space!
You may or may not be surprised to learn that Double Dragon on the C64 could have been very different – or at least a lot better than it was!
We don’t know that for sure though – but we do know that the game was originally being developed by another team at Binary Design, but the developers had gone AWOL apparently.
It left Virgin Mastertronic with no game to market, having already paid for all the marketing. With a very good reputation, Virgin went to Ash and Dave to see if they could help them salvage the conversion. After making them an offer they couldn’t refuse, they were snapped up to do a conversion.
However, Ash and Dave were only given a crazy 6 week deadline to complete the entire game – but the publisher told them that they just needed something to put in a box and sell. Regardless of that statement, Ash and Dave did their utmost best given the time-frame – but unfortunately it showed and the conversion was universally panned.
Knowing this was likely going to happen, they did not add their credits to the game – as it could well have affected future work contracts at the time. Can you blame them?
But what of the game that was originally in development? How far did it get? Why was it abandoned?
Double Dragon Dojo did an interview with Nick Speakman, who was the project manager at Binary Design during the home conversions of Double Dragon in 1988 at the age of just 19.
At the start, it seemed things were going well, and graphics were being initially being drawn by hand before being ported via screen grabbing from the JAMMA boards. A team of programmers who were set to do the developments apparently “made a mess of it” and Binary Design were told by Virgin Mastertronic to “do it again” and even change all the graphics.
Apparently many of the “old guard” Binary Design had left, and it was mostly graduate programmers who had come in and were given the game as their first assignment. It all needed to be done in time for Christmas sales. Originally their team had about 3 months to do everything, but now with the re-write it was just several weeks now available to get it all done.
Game confirmed as released and now found by Genesis Project at http://csdb.dk/release/?id=151054
Case closed! :)
A short entry for now on a title which was converted in a matter of a week by Richard Ikin for Future Concepts (who had released Ramparts). The game was handed over to Sean Lally afterwards and never seen again.
The game was due to be released by Advanced Software Promotions, but never quite made it – quite possibly because the company went under before it could be released. Richard believes that the game was released, but if it was – then it would have been in very limited numbers indeed.
The ZX Spectrum version did manage to get a release though, and although a simple game – it would be nice to try and find it.
Alternative Software later re-released game, but only on the Spectrum – meaning that they couldn’t obtain a C64 edition for whatever reason. So did Advanced Software Promotions, go under before it could sneak out?
Richard was given a tape copy of the game, which suggests it got very close and copies were mastered. If its out there, it could take a massive effort to find it. Sadly Richard no longer has his copy, so the search begins!
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