Documenting unreleased, cancelled and prototype video games.
Welcome to Games That Weren't!
We are an unreleased and cancelled 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 games that were never released to the public. Sharing history and stories from the developers, assets and more before it is too late.
The latest issue of the free C64 fanzine, RESET has been released, which features a new regular Games That Weren’t section. This month covering Genesis’ Spellcast game.
Check out the magazine and download from here:
More collated updates from GTW64, with the following:
Flight Deck 2, The Light Corridor
Aurum, Crossbow, Habitat, Joust, Questerious, Sonic The Hedgehog, Star Tech Games, Stargate, Xamitlu
GTW recently had an email from Andy Swann, who was one of the key programmers at Twilight back in the early 90’s, and one of the lead developers of the cool Alfred Chicken on the Amiga.
Andy has been attempting to find his old disks, and at Christmas found three disks. One blank, one with an early demo version of Alfred Chicken (Amiga) and another (and exciting!) early demo of an aborted title called Frog Dude on the Sega Megadrive.
Firstly, Alfred Chicken’s demo is believed to be a ECTS demo with some differences from the final game (including a different picture of Alfred Chicken, different game palette and no sound effects). A nice curiosity!
Frog Dude is a title which we don’t believe has been heard about before. It was prototyped around the same time as Alfred Chicken, but wasn’t quite as strong a title – hence development was stopped before it could be touted to any publishers. Andy was the lead developer, whilst Peter Tattersall was on graphics. Andy’s agent, John Cook, had come in and said that the Frog Dude title was “workman-like” and suggested they didn’t bother with finishing it. Andy then went on to port Alfred Chicken to the Gameboy instead.
As you can see from the various screenshots, the game takes some visual cues from Super Mario World, as the guys at the time were very taken by the game. The game allows you to swap between a mace wielding prince and a frog with a large tongue. There are some nice cartoony graphics, including a small animated sequence at the start – but no sound in place.
Thanks very much to Andy, he has allowed us to share both the Alfred Chicken demo and Frog Dude with you all. So feel free to download and run in your favorite emulator and take a look in particular at what could have been a British take on Super Mario World!
Keeping up the trend, some more new entries and various updates have been added.
This includes news of another Psygnosis conversion that never was, an interesting Club Light game, a selection of John Vanderaart entries, some newly recovered Duncan Kershaw games, confirmation that a cartridge version of Spy Who Loved Me did exist, David Doll speaks to GTW64 about the Virus April fools and much more. Enjoy!
Anarchy, Aurum, Club Light adventure, Duncan Kershaw games, Gravity, Playboy – The Game, Smakeloos, The Spy Who Loved Me C64GS,
Castle Boy, Crossbow (William Tell), Here and there with the Mr Men, Space Hop, Starburst, Stratagos, Toki V1, Virus
Our first update for 2014 includes the following:
See the “Updates made” link at the top of each page for what has changed.
Ballfever, Bugs Bunny, Darksyde, Here and there with the Mr Men, Lethal Xcess, Spellcast, Star Tech Games, Your Computer Software Exchange
A huge surprise for Amiga fans today, as System 3 have released the Amiga version of Putty Squad after being missing for almost 20 years and to mark the release of the Playstation release.
The game has been preserved thanks to the efforts of Galahad/Fairlight who helped master the game for release with John Twiddy and Phil Thornton.
I have to say, many of us were skeptical to whether the game would ever be released – but credit to System 3 for a very kind gift to the Amiga community just before the end of the year. Could Fuzzball (C64) be next? ;-)
For more details and download:
http://www.system3.com/promotional-download/puttysquadamiga/
It is that time of the year again, and another bumper update which has been building up. The big difference this year was the lack of a backlog, so all the materials here have been the result of further digging and disk preservations. We hope you enjoy it all, and there will be more in 2014 for sure! Merry Christmas!
Thanks to Cory Kin and the loan of his work disks, we have found a number of full games which are previously unseen
Flok, Jet Combat, Master Blast
Thanks to Richard Smedley, CDU Games Disk 6 has been fully recovered and preserved – preserving 3 more previously unseen full games: Outbreak, Mirror Image and Mystery Man
Mostly thanks to Cory Kin’s work disk loan, a large amount of previously lost game previews (a lot of Cory’s own work) have been salvaged and preserved:
IndeflataBall, Erik, Earth Mover, Assault Force, Make My Day, Navadon, Pet Rescue, Questor 3, Unknown cute game, Unknown game, Unknown platformer, Unknown shooter
It’s been in the digital archives for a while, but has remains of Spore 2 been under our noses all this time? Or at least an earlier build. Take a look at Cybowormz and then compare to Mutant Zone.
A loading screen by Lizard has been recovered showing a game called Questerious – we find that it was a Melbourne House title. Was it a precursor for Thone of Fire?
Two early editions of two Edge games have been recovered and added to two separate prototype post entries here:
R.I.S.K prototypes, Tangent prototype
Altarius, Arc Angel, Atlaxmax, B-Ball, Bad Game, Ballfever, Ballisation, Cheeky Twins III, City Invaders, Danger! High Voltage, Death Blow, Dionysus III, Doomed World, Game Got No Name, Horror Drive, Hyper Galactic Warrior, Impulse, International Karate V1, Knight “‘n’ Grail 2, Omega Ceti, Rampage V1, Repton, Rim Raiders, Sir Lancelot, Space Ace, Starswarm, Temple of Medom, Trazers, Uridibad, Xiphoid, Jet Pac (Unofficial)
Some more additions and tweaks. Check out the updates link for each to see what has changed. Nexus V1 has been added, but a Beyond Software labelled edition.
Basket Master V1, Deep Star, Escape, Firebird, Imperium, Lost Robot 2, Mindsmear, Movie Monster, The, Nexus V1, Star of Africa
A digitisation project which has been in progress for several years on and off now. The webmaster of GTW64 has compiled together all their work disks, tapes and gone through the lot – compiling together anything unfinished, incomplete pictures, games, demos into individual folders. More details on the page here with download links:
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.
