Games That Weren't^®

There are two games with this odd name, and this one in particular is a completely different more established game which has more going on. There are title pages and even a loading screen for this one

Here you control a guy on a flying bird that has to shoot other birds, and that is pretty much it at this stage.

The game like with the other named title from 1987 never got finished or released in a fuller form. The graphics artist got in touch and confirmed some credits, so we hope to learn more soon about the games. It is confirmed that both are by the same people.

Sput is part of a glut of simple previews that got released, where to get a sprite and a bunch of sprites being thrown all over the place.

This title seems to be the beginnings of a space shooter, with some rock sprites thrown around which you can’t actually do anything about.

Nothing else to say, and with no coder credit – it will be tough to find out what the intentions were for this game.

A very very early preview where you currently just scroll upwards on a never-ending road with nothing to really do or anywhere to go.

It seems just like a basic test routine to start off with, which never got much further than this.

With no credits attached, this could be a very tricky title to tie down and work out exactly what happened to it.

Spectral Sneer is a neat early preview, where you can control either a Wizard or a Warrior in a sideways scrolling platformer, where you can go underground or above ground, fighting with various enemies.

It’s fairly dinky, but pretty neat and has a good budget game feel to it. Once you get to the end of the map, that seems to be it, but its a preview with a bit of substance.

Who was behind this preview? We’re not sure, but we hope to find out soon, so that we can quiz them about this cool preview.

Do you know anything more about it?

Not a huge amount to see here with Space Killer, with what seems to be a sort of multi-directional scroller (in Sinistar style), but with glitches everywhere and nothing to really do.

This may have been to get some cheap cracking points, but maybe Theodore Hall will prove us wrong and show that there was more to this game than meets the eye?

Was this title meant for anyone in particular, or was it a test routine which snuck out when it shouldn’t have?

Black Turk strikes again with quite possibly the most crazy of his creations. Deciding to have a go at seeing what Sonic could be like on the C64, but without the expertise to pull off the scrolling, we got this.

In some ways, its actually pretty funny and you control what looks like Sonic from a retirement home, aimlessly jumping around flat platforms which have a rough resembalance to the iconic first level.

This actually is what I had nightmares about the Master System version turning out to be when I was getting it one Christmas back in 1992, but of course it turned out to be brilliant. Or it would be what i’d expect a Tiertex conversion to have looked like had US Gold got their way and the licence to the game.

This was as far as the preview got, and its great to see. I like Black Turk’s enthusiasm to get these titles converted, but Snow Bros was a far stronger effort.

I hardly need to describe the game I guess, as the title pretty much sums up the topic of this box shifting game.

An unofficial conversion, as an official conversion had already been released – this seems to be some kind of response to the original game, though it seems to have never been properly finished.

It plays well enough and doesn’t seem too far away from being a game engine that could have been filled with levels to create a full game.

With no developer credits, this will be a difficult one to try and find out more about, but we’ll try!

This is a pretty interesting unofficial conversion of Snow Bros which surfaced in 2012 from a coder called Black Turk.

It’s very rough around the edges, but it isn’t too bad – and looks like a Snow Bros game, though with what seems to be converted graphics and very bad music.

This seems to have been done just out of general interest to see if something could be done on the C64, but there is no intention of finishing the conversion.

Hopefully the coder will shed some light on what made him try to convert this and Sonic to the C64.

Snoopy 2 is an unofficial sequel to the 1984 RadarSoft game, where you must jump over a series of objects to get to the next level.

The sequel just presents more of the same with snazzier graphics overall. The preview seems to have a few screens, but little else at this stage.

The game should have been fairly simple to finish off and package up as a full game, but for reasons unknown – it never happened.

Was it a case of the developers going onto other things before it could be finished?

Nothing to see here, more on!

Skylight is nothing really more at this stage a demo part – just with a logo and a sprite that moves around. It isn’t really a game! Maybe it was just a demo?

For what it is, it looks ok – but doesn’t seem much point seeing it released in this state.

Can Robert be contacted and shed light on what this title was to be about?