Games That Weren't^®

A quick entry for remains of a bouncy platformer game in very early stages and written by Cory Kin.

There was no name attached to the game, but upon executing we have a sprite which drops down from the top of the screen and seems to be able to scroll left and right and bounce from platform to platform. Certain platforms flash and can kill you if you land on them.

It seems there are no level maps intact, and it just happened that some character in memory helped to populate the level. We are hoping that Cory will recall something about the game.

We did wonder if this was actually Pet Rescue in an early form, but trying to embed some of the graphics that we found didn’t quite fit, so we believe it is something else.

Feel free to check it out for now!

Yet another title from the brilliant Cory Kin, and this time a very impressive vertically scrolling shoot-em-up, with some lovely graphics and attack waves.

It’s still early days and a relatively short map, but there is enough here to show case Cory’s talents, which no doubt he was trying to do with this game. This demo was found on a disk with a number of other executables which we believe Cory sent out to companies to try and get employment.

We don’t believe that this game got any further than this unfortunately, which is a massive shame – as the title does clearly have a lot of promise. Sadly it isn’t a title which can be picked up by anyone, as we didn’t find any source code for the game.

A cool glimpse at a rather neat title – hopefully we’ll hear more from Cory about the game very soon.

A working title of course, labelled on the disk as “When Uridium”, and called “When Uridium was famous” – this is a short game demo show casing a Uridium type game with very smooth and fast scrolling.

This was the work of Cory Kin yet again, and was most likely started and touted to game companies to try and get work.

We haven’t found any evidence to suggest that this clone got any further than the tech demo – which is a shame, as this feels like it could have been more than a match for the original game.

Hopefully at some point soon, Cory will shed some light on the game and if there is any more story behind the title. Watch this space!

Xytris is a really strange puzzler, which isn’t a tetris puzzler like you may think from the name, but a title where you must re-create the character from the box on the right side of the screen.

There are two sets of boxes, suggesting that it was a 2 player competition game where you must see who completes the stage first.

It’s fairly simple, and we guess that the programmer just lost interest in the title at the time. We wonder if there was intention for the game to be released on a magazine cover or something like that?

Do you know anything more about it?

Xoanon (released as Xoanon Reptilia – which we’ll come onto shortly…) seems to be an early version of Xenon, or at least Gamebase makes the link with the game. So, are they indeed the same game?

This preview just seems to be a simple prototype vertical scroller, with Xenon’esq backgrounds. But one of the key things to note is that the score panel matches most of the Xenon panel.

GTW64 researcher Gaz Spence flagged up this game in our archives in December 2022, and that the C64 versions likely came out in July 1988. First release of this demo seems to be early March 1988, which more or less falls into the same release time-frame as the original 16-bit game. Seems there could be more to this preview than meets the eye.

Another thing is that the game was very likely misnamed as “Xoanon Reptilia” during its leak/crack. We believe that Reptilia is just the name of the development team (Reptilia Design) that was behind the work (RD are also initials in the score panel), and was included within the score panel as credit. “Xoanon” may have been a deliberate attempt at moving away from the final release name.

At the moment we’ve been getting in touch with some ex-Reptilia Design members to try and establish that this was one of their works, and what the story is behind it. Ian and Mic have confirmed that it was not one of their developments, and Rob Whitaker and Steve Snake also confirmed it wasn’t theirs. Rob doesn’t think it is Warren Mills’ work, and both Rob and Steve suggest that it could be Andy Mucho.

We’re now just waiting to hear back from Andy to see if it was indeed his – as there are really no other candidates at the moment and we’re pretty certain it was done by someone in Reptilia. Rob informs us that Reptilia Designs was never a formal company but just a name used on games and demos by a bunch of programmers.

It seems very possible that this was an early development of Xenon that was being done in parallel with the 16-bit versions – but was abandoned, and passed straight onto a cracking crew to release (but with a slight name change to go under the radar). However, Rob says that although one of the Reptilia Design people may have put this together, at no point was any Reptilia person officially hired to work on a conversion.

Of course, an official and finished version of Xenon would appear some months later, created by Chris Caress, who was nothing to do with Reptilia Design.

We hope to have more on this all soon, but thanks to Gaz for giving the kick to investigate in more detail about the title, which has helped lead us to this stage.

A silly name for a simple two player game (or the beginnings of one) where you must thrust around and destroy each other.

The preview features some hi-res graphics and working ships, but no real interaction between the two just yet.

There are no credits attached to the game, but as its a more recent title – we’re hopeful of finding out more about it and what the intentions were.

Did it ever progress past this preview point?

A simple and quick preview, but one which has been done very well and features a sort of wizard that you have to guide to the end of a room, avoiding some sort of raindrops.

We believe that this was just a single screen preview, and that the full game would have featured multiple screens with different types of obstacles to avoid. It may have even been a flip screen arcade adventure in the making.

There is little else known about this slickly produced early preview, so we need your help to establish who was behind the game and start to see if we can recover anything more of it.

Vitrus sounds like a puzzler, but its nothing of the sort – and is actually a sort of Fly Harder/Thrust clone, where you must guide your ship through some tight caverns.

It’s pretty unforgiving at this early stage, but it looks very nice and slick and has plenty of promise.

We’re unsure what ever happened to this game, as nothing more was ever heard after the preview surfaced.

Was it ever produced any further, or was this it? Who was also behind the game??

Well, thanks to Gaz Spence, we find that the game was just a quick hack of a title released 5 years earlier called Mission 2 – http://www.gb64.com/game.php?id=4903&d=18&h=0

Question is now whether this game was intentionally being enhanced as a new title, or if this was a quick rehash to get some cheap cracking points?

TWO is an early sideways scroller by Carl Wade of Gemini Wing fame.

It is a cool looking preview, with some cool backgrounds, but borrowing sprites from Into Oblivion for the time being.

Carl’s note suggests that this was to be a proper game, and nothing something to tout to potential employees.

We believe that Carl got picked up by Sales Curve, and was put onto Gemini Wing instead of finishing this game. It will be hard to really find out, as we believe that Carl passed away some years ago.

Does anyone know anything about this game?

Trailrunner is an interesting preview, mostly because it seems to be lifting a lot from the C64 conversion of Stun Runner, at least in the main sprite form anyway.

I wonder if Trailrunner was being developed in response to the poor C64 conversion, as the scrolling looks a lot smoother (even though nothing is really turning and there are no tunnels). But then the level does start with the title – “The Big Roundabout”, which is probably a bit of a joke.

Was it a serious game? Who knows? There is no coder credit to attach to the game just yet, so it could be a while until we find out.