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 since 1999.
Please Browse our archive and discover the many entries that we host for many different platforms.
Some years ago I was talking on the Lemon 64 of a strange recollection of a rather different looking version of the C64 Wonderboy. I had the budget edition of the game, which I played to death – but also later picked up the game on a Beau Jolly 30 pack of games. The recollection was of a rather expanded looking main sprite (where as the version I originally played had two sprites bolted together).
Mostly thanks to some excellent contributions from Kurt Woloch, here are some updates for a number of Atarisoft games that never were below.
This includes some previously unseen C64 screens for Joust and half of one for Stargate…
Retro Gamer issue 113 had once featured an excellent feature on the trilogy of Shadowfire by Martyn Carroll. Trilogy? Well, you’ll need to check out the article to find out more details about the 3rd game (as well as get an insight from the original developers).
Part of the feature included the uncovering of a concept document for Shadowfire 3, which was discovered by Dennis Gustafsson, whilst digging out some other materials for Martyn.
The document was given to Dennis by Ally Nobel whilst at Denton Designs between 1991 and 1995 time. Rage absorbed Denton by 1995, and sadly Shadowfire 3 was a casualty of this. The game was planned for development on the PC (and later PlayStation and Saturn)… the Amiga wasn’t thought to be in the plans due to it being a bit late in the day.
Thanks to Martyn and Dennis on their rescue attempts on digitally preserving the document, we are very happy to release the document (thanks also to Ally Nobel for giving us the go ahead). It’s a wonderful document, with some great concept sketches throughout. Take a look of what could have been in this incomplete trilogy!
Download concept document (PDF – 13mb)
After one update, Jason Kelk has very kindly dug out and helped recover 3 previously unseen previews in the shape of Ball Game, Speed Trap and Xykik.
Three very promising early previews. Here goes with the summary of tonight’s updates:
Continuing to get through the occasional update. Here is some more to keep you all going!
Kult: The Temple of Flying Saucers, Rescue Mission, Speed Trap, Toi Acid Game, Vicious Circle
10th Dan, Opera House and The Pay Off, Purple Saturn Day, T-Wrecks, Turbo Cup Challenge
NOTE: This has been brought into the GTW64 archive as a V1 entry at:
A quick addition showing a rather different looking Knuckle Buster game on the C64 by Mat Sneap. Luckily in this case the preview has been around for some time. The thing is that some people have specified that they prefer the preview to the final game. Do you agree?
Here is a comparison between the early version title screen and final version:
And now the game itself:
If you want to check out both versions yourself, then grab them from here:
The first update for March this year. Hopefully some findings coming up very soon, with some exciting developments bubbling up. Check these out for now…
Battle Truck, Eagle Storm, Squad One
Cloak Of Death, Opera House and The Pay Off, Otherworld, QA!, Quest of Eternity, Rebel Star 2, Recon, Sphere, Unnamed trailblazer clone, Victory!, Vietnam Gunboat
Andrew Morris has been allowing us to preserve some of his disks to show incomplete/unused materials to the world, and recently we have discovered the assets to the likes of Kikstart 2 and Cosmic Causeway and various others.
This is a recent update to the post I did previously on just Kikstart 2 and Cosmic Causeway assets to expand and include more recent findings. Some will have been commercially used, but there are a few bits and pieces to check out.
If you’ve been checking out GTW for some years now, you may recognise the Apocalypse and Putty Squad write ups. They are indeed nothing new, but reviews that were salvaged recently from the old site.
I’ve just quickly tidied them up and added them in. If you haven’t read them before, then enjoy! :)
Code – Simon Nicol
Graphics – Herman Serrano
Sound – Mike Clarke
Ten years after Mega Apocalypse, Simon Nicol’s awesome ‘Mad Planets’ conversion was to be given the 16-bit treatment. ‘Apocalypse 2’ was born.
‘Apocalypse 2’ is a one/two player mixture of Gyruss and Asteroids, with a main ship that can rotate 360º after collecting the relevant power-up. You must destroy waves of planets that hurtle along and grow in size if you don’t shoot them early. Once planets are at full size, they take more shots to destroy and speed up the more they are shot. If you thought that was enough, fireballs also appear from nowhere to surprise and destroy you!
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.
