Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
Welcome to Games That Weren't!
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.
A quick entry for a title which was to be an Electronic Novel for Broderbund and Synapse. Where most of the planned titles were released and coded by Joe Viera (http://www.gamebase64.com/search.php?a=5&f=1&id=1963&d=18&h=0), the rest of them for some reason never quite made it.
This was one of those titles which never surfaced. According to MobyGames, it is suggested that the previous games were released to mixed success – which is probably why this title was cancelled. MobyGames also had the following mentioned (thanks to Fabrizio for flagging!):
“Synapse Software’s William Mataga and Steve Hales spent much of 1984-1985 designing a new “predictive” text adventure parser to incorporate Eliza’s intuition into a competitor for Infocom’s text parser. (BTZ expanded to “Better Than Zork”.)
These resultant works of interactive fiction were marketed by Synapse’s friendly acquirer Broderbund as “electronic novel”s to mixed success, leaving the line with four works published and three complete but unreleased (Ronin, House of Changes, and Deadly Summer)”
But its been confirmed that the game was completed and should be out there some where. Does Joe Viera have a copy of the game still?
A quick entry for a title which was to be an Electronic Novel for Broderbund and Synapse. Where most of the planned titles were released and coded by Joe Viera (http://www.gamebase64.com/search.php?a=5&f=1&id=1963&d=18&h=0), the rest of them for some reason never quite made it.
This was one of those titles which never surfaced. According to MobyGames, it is suggested that the previous games were released to mixed success – which is probably why this title was cancelled.
Thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni for his research, Computer Entertainer says the game was a murder mystery (page 13) and slated for release on the fourth quarter of 1985 (page 14, second column) (see scans)
But its been confirmed that the game was completed and should be out there some where. Does Joe Viera have a copy of the game still?
A quick entry for a title which was to be an Electronic Novel for Broderbund and Synapse. Where most of the planned titles were released and coded by Joe Viera (http://www.gamebase64.com/search.php?a=5&f=1&id=1963&d=18&h=0), the rest of them for some reason never quite made it.
This was one of those titles which never surfaced. According to MobyGames, it is suggested that the previous games were released to mixed success – which is probably why this title was cancelled.
But its been confirmed that the game was completed and should be out there some where. Does Joe Viera have a copy of the game still?
Thanks to Michael Huth, more credits and some artwork has been found in a manual for Brimstone. This reveals an extra credit of William Mataga as programmer, and the following story:
“The Diamyo’s daughter is kidnapped! You, the Ronin, masterless samurai, must return her or purge your dishonour with ritual suicide. Navigate the feudal castle, befriend the Zen master, penetrate the ninja stronghold. When your task seems done, you are far from done. What is and what only seems to be?
The eastern sky pales. The hour of the Horse approaches. Wake now, Ronin; you must strap on your sword and make an offering to the gods . .. You continue to float upward, surrounded by cavernous black clouds that stretch for immeasurable distances on all sides. You feel like a sail cut loose from its ship and carried aloft by a whirlwind …”
Well, in 2023 – the Atari version was recovered – so this gives a glimpse of what the game would have been like. There is also a great video about the finding too. Can the C64 edition now be found?
A short entry for a title which has been revealed as in production by Craig Wight in the early 90’s.
The game was penned for Hi-Tec software, and it is very likely that it got caught up in the company going under, as the title later surfaced on the Amiga platform under the Alternative Software label.
Craig confirmed that the game only got as far as the main character wandering around and the scroller part, but that was it.
Craig recalled that he was working on it whilst the Freddie Mercury tribute concert was on TV, which dates production around April 1992. Hi-Tec were still going well at this point, and it wasn’t until August/September of that year when they hit troubles.
It is possible therefore that Craig was pulled onto other productions or he lost interest. Unfortunately he cannot recall why the game was canned.
Unfortunately Craig has confirmed that he no longer has any of his old work disks, so the chances of finding anything of this short but sweet conversion is very unlikely.
A very short and quick entry for a title which was produced by Martin Piper in 1989.
Code named Droid Alert, this was a title which essentially was just an early test of scrolling and door routines. It is very similar to what later got incorporated into Citadel 2, so it is very possible this was the initial version.
The title got scrapped very early on, and this was pretty much all that ever existed.
Check out Citadel 2 for a more advanced version of the game engine with a different name.
UPDATE! – Case closed! Game confirmed as released and preserved by Marco (Exile) Das and Genesis Project. See downloads.
Early days, hence a very short entry. Contributor Jari Karjalainen has reported that in a DigitPress interview with Robert Jaeger (creator of Montezuma’s Revenge), he mentioned a game called Crossfire Canyon.
Originally this was made by his friend Dave Sullivan and he was to convert it to the C64.
Unfortunately neither version has been found, so does it exist? Can anyone help otherwise preserve it? It seems that the game could be preserved at the “Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection in the History of Microcomputing at the Online Archive of California”. We’ll see how this goes.
The game itself was a port of a title from the Vic-20, written by Dave Sullivan. It was simple and fun, where you would control a guy trapped on a platform on the bottom of a canyon. There were two volcanoes that showered a stream of rocks on the left and right sides. You could only run left and right and pick up rocks and debris that lands on the floor. Enemy creatures would emerge from caves on the left and right side – these would arrange in stacks and push rocks at the player.
At the time, Robert suggests it was criticized for being too simplistic and as a result was never released. It is possible that Robert has it still somewhere, but may not wish to release the game.
But recently in 2017, contributor Mark Sawtelle came forward with a sealed copy of the game, which was released by BCI software. We are not 100% certain if it is the exact same game, but hope to find out soon. It’s likely the game may be sold at auction in the future, so chances of seeing it preserved may still be slim. But it seems the game could well be out there!
Early days, hence a very short entry – but we have reports that there were indications of a sequel to Black Gold by reLine being released for the Amiga.
A short entry for a title which was written by Patricia Curtis, and was snapped up in the end by Microprose. Before that, Patricia was touting the game around to several publishers.
All we know so far was that the game was to be an isometric puzzler. Patricia tells us that you would bounce a ball around different one screen levels – where the object was to fill the ball up with the correct colour from puddles of colour that were also moving around the level. If the ball bounced on a drain, the ball broke – if not, then the tile would bounce down and spring back.
The black colour was the bad colour and emptied your ball. You also had a few power ups and other things like indestructible ball, teleports and more.
Sadly the game is completely lost due to Patricia not keeping any of her work disks, so it is very likely that this game is now sadly lost for good.
A short entry for a title which was reportedly for Mastertronic back in 1988, but for reasons currently unknown never quite made it.
The game was being developed by Reptilia Design, with code by Andy Syco (of Werewolves in London fame), graphics by Blancmange (?) and sound by Neil Baldwin. It seems the cracking crew – Fusion, got hold of a pre-release version of the game and leaked it. Is this the reason why the game didn’t get released?
When you load up the preview – there isn’t a huge amount to do. You control a large flying guy, who has a limited range of shooting, and must scroll along horizontally – attacked by a series of unimaginative attack waves. There are no backgrounds or anything else of note, which suggests that this game was at a very early stage.
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