Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
We are a 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.
Empire wasn’t a label one would normally associate with the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum, with just a handful of titles (Pipe Mania, Dr Doom’s Revenge, Gazza’s Super Soccer, Gazza 2) and a compilation (Soccer Stars) under it’s belt.
Following the success of their Captain America and Spiderman crossover game Dr Doom’s Revenge, Empire picked up the licence to produce a stand alone game featuring Spiderman. Continue reading
It’s not just games that we preserve at Games That Weren’t, but we try and preserve a variety of software which hasn’t yet been digitized or made available online. Thanks to the sterling efforts of Aaron White, we have a set of 9 Amiga Public Domain disks that had yet to be preserved (until now!).
These contain a set of music demos, and also PD library catalogues which feature music, images and introduction sequences created especially. Hopefully these will be eventually redistributed into various Amiga archives. Continue reading
Our next title into the archives is a very early platform game for the Game Boy Color, and was developed around 1999. It is unknown currently what the origins are for it, if it was for an official development or part of a development competition (we weren’t able to spot on our initial searches). It was found within some development archives of Mark Greenshields, but this wasn’t one of their titles.
There isn’t much to the preview at this stage, and is more of an engine test with a decent main character who walks along a really nicely drawn level map with platform blocks (including musical blocks) and water hazards. Continue reading
More prototypes from the Enigma Variations archives, with three for the SNES with Kevin Keegan’s Player Manager. These prototypes are dated from the 18th June to the 20th October 1993.
The most interesting of the prototypes if the earliest, with a non-playable demo where you see two computer teams playing against each other. There are some graphical differences, including in particular with the billboards on the side. Continue reading
Our next title into the archives is a very early platform shooter game for the Game Boy Color, and was developed around 1999. It is unknown currently what the origins are for it, if it was for an official development or part of a development competition (we weren’t able to spot on our initial searches). It was found within some development archives of Mark Greenshields, but this wasn’t one of their titles.
There isn’t much to the preview at this stage, and is more of an engine test with a decent main character that shoots a rapid machine gun and can scroll from left to right, jumping over crates and holes in the ground. If you fall down a hole, that’s it – and you’ll have to restart the prototype. Continue reading
UPL Company Limited was a Japanese game developer best known for titles like Kōtetsu Yōsai Strahl, Vandyke, and Black Heart. These games later received modern re-releases, introducing them to a new generation of players – myself included, as I might never have discovered Vandyke without these ports.
Shortly after releasing Kōtetsu Yōsai Strahl and Mahjong Haōden: Kaiser’s Quest, UPL went out of business. However, before its closure, the company was secretly developing a shoot-’em-up titled Breakshow. Continue reading
2025 is going past in a flash as we enter into August, and GTW64 is continuing to evolve and grow too. This month we have added 6 new entries, including the great looking Indy 3 adventure game homebrew that sadly was cancelled, an early development of Skateball and lots more.
We then have 9 updates for you, which includes the recent recovery of Bryan Robson’s Super League, not only for the C64, but ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC. See you all next month!
Competition Karate 2, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Adventure), Infinite Inferno, Programmerings-Tävling entries, Skateball
Bryan Robson’s Super League, C64GS cartridge titles, Footy game, Gem-X 2, Graham Gooch World Class Cricket, Hollywood Poker, Sword of Sodan, Xtron, Zolo
Thanks to LiqMatrix for his preservation work, we have uploaded a 1996 PC Shareware compilation onto Archive.org called Best of MVP Software. Most games likely archived, but could be a few not out there. CD itself wasn’t preserved.
https://archive.org/details/best-of-mvp-software-games-cd-media
Our next entry into the GTW archives is a very early Game Boy Color title called MBC that was being created by a developer/artist called Nick London in 1999, before his days of working on Star Wars and Need for Speed games.
MBC (not sure what it currently stands for!) is a simple platform shooter, sort of like a miniature version of Rolling Thunder, where you have a fun that fires rapidly and needs to be replenished by pressing down on small ammo panels. There is an enemy that paces back and forth, but you cannot harm them in this demo. Continue reading
Countdown was an adventure game consisting of digitized characters and with synthesized speech, eventually released in 1991 for MS-DOS. According to the PC version’s review in The One magazine (February 1991) – Amiga and Atari ST versions were due in autumn of that year.
Sadly, it was never to be and apart from the mention in The One magazine, there has been no further details about either of the conversions. The question is whether they were ever started and if so, how far did they get? Continue reading
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.
