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.
Possibly the final update for August, here are some more updates for GTW64 which include:
Breaker, Crystal Chamber, Fireblaster, Rocket Roger V1, Skweek, The Ancient Art of War, Typhoon Thompson, Unknown platform game
Airwolf 2 V1, Body Slam, Delphian, I Of The Mask, Mutant Zone, Search For Sharla, Star Force Seven, Star Maze, Zanaton
Not massively different, but thanks to Luca Bertoldi, here is a screen showing a rather different looking main character for Stormlord – looking more elvish and beardless.
It’s possible that more early screens exist, so if you spot any – please let us know! Main graphics seem to be the same as the final game, though Compounded (see comments) has spotted that there are minor parts which are not present in the final game.
And another shot thanks to Patrick de Zoete, showing just a bit further on from above:
I recently picked up some Sinclair User magazines at a market stall, and whilst browsing through I had a look at the Frankie Goes To Hollywood advert on the back. Nothing unusual you might say, as it was pretty much plastered around in the press back then.
What was strange was the screenshot of a scene I had never seen before in the final game. Looking at the others, there were a number of differences. I’m not sure how I hadn’t noticed them before! When I got back home and did some more investigations, I found that the advert was in fact an earlier advert featuring what seemed to be screens taken from the graphical editors directly – most likely whilst the game was still early in development for both the Spectrum and C64. The give away seems to be with the white cursor squares in the corner of most of the screenshots.
Comparing against the final release, here are the screens I found which are quite different. The most interesting of the images has to be the Frankenstein/dungeon scene, which is clearly C64 based and didn’t make the cut. Hopefully we will learn soon what this part may have entailed. Is anything of it still tucked away in the final game?
Recently I checked with Karen Davies and Ally Noble if they could recall what it was. Karen couldn’t remember it at all, but Ally recognised it – but couldn’t place it. Ally suggests that it may have even been for another game by Denton that didn’t make it – which seems very plausible considering the material doesn’t seem to “fit” in the FGTH design.
In July 2015, Vinny Mainolfi found a magazine snippet which shows another early screenshot of the puzzle room.
First update for August, and an almost complete Scooby Doo game has arrived from nowhere thanks to the game’s creator via the Lemon64 forums…
Check it out at … Scooby Doo
Aircat, Jonny Quest, The Flintstones, The Jetsons
Captain America (Picture recovered!), Flashback (New picture), King Of Chicago (Advert), SDI (Advert), Vale Of Shadows (Minor details update)
And finally we have produced a tribute to the late Martin Holland, which has been well overdue…
For years i’ve been talking of setting up a page to showcase and celebrate the artwork and life of the late Martin Holland, but have rather ashamedly never got round to it. When finding an old email from 2006 when I was still talking about sorting something out, enough was enough… Martin sadly passed away at the far too young age of 35 back in August 2003, and it was a massive shock at the time – as we had only been emailing previously a few days before.
I was privileged to have known Martin for a few years – who was very influential in helping me when I first started up the Games That Weren’t website around late 1999 – gathering information (and even help find) on titles such as Solar Jetman and many more. He also had a cracking sense of humor too – demonstrated by many a funny email over the years.
I’ve only really been aware of Martin’s C64 work specifically, so searching across the web for games that included Martin’s artist works was a huge eye opener for me – mainly due to the variety of platforms that he had covered, which must have required a huge level of skill and patience getting to grips with each machine’s quirks and flaws. Continue reading
Another GTW64 update for the (far too) hot month of July, including:
Chopperman, Clod Jumper, Commodore Juicer, Hex-Bert, Qrazy Qber
Many thanks to Dave Peacock, who recently recovered the following graphical assets for Beverly Hills Cop on the C64 from his work disks.
It seems that at somepoint, Michael Owens took over graphical duties on the C64 – leaving Dave to concentrate on the Spectrum and Amstrad versions.
Here you can find an unused car dashboard and steering wheel – which was probably meant for the 3D driving section which was dropped from the C64 edition. If anything else turns up, we’ll add it here.
First GTW64 update for July, which includes the following
Arsenal FC, Brides Of Dracula, Heavy Barrel, Rex, The Rocky Horror Adventure Show, Total Recall V1, Zanatron
Over the last week, various prototypes have been saved from a bunch of disks which were found by Mark R Jones, which include the following (clickable links to Atari Mania pages):
Some of the demos were recovered by Mark himself, and the rest were salvaged by the guys at Atari Mania, who have now made all the prototypes available for download (after Mark gave the thumbs up). Fantastic work to all involved!
Starquake 2 is arguably the star of the show in the recoveries, and shows a very promising early demo in action. Unfortunately it was cancelled after both Mark and Paul Hughes were called up to work on Flood 2 – which you can read more about here.
It is hoped that Flood 2 could actually be next on the list, with a demo disk in the hands of Paul Hughes which hopefully still reads after all this time.
Check them out via the links above!
GTW recently helped online games journalist Larry Bundy Jr with research and information on the Thundercats game series by Elite, including the two unreleased titles.
And the final result has been published last week. Here it is, enjoy!
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Games That Weren't® is the registered trademark of Frank Gasking.
