Unreleased & Cancelled Video Games across many platforms.
Welcome to Games That Weren't!
We are an Unreleased and Cancelled 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 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 video game history since 1999.
The was originally posted on the central GTW site a couple of years back, luckily for Frank I archive things obsessively and thus still had all the files and details on my computer. Enjoy!
The story of Berserker Works is similar to many software houses in the 1980s. Set up as a small company with only one or two people at the helm, it released several games over the years before running out of steam in the late 1980s, having never managed to secure the major distribution needed to gain a profitable foothold in the industry.
The difference with Berserker Works is that it was created and run by best-selling science fiction and fantasy author, Fred Saberhagen, who by the 1980s had been writing books for over twenty years. He had seen the rising interest in computer games and believed that it would only grow, and felt it would be a good idea to create a story that would make a great computer game. What he came up with, the Book of Swords, was too complex for the technology of the time, but Berserker Works (named after his science fiction series based around a race of death machines known as the Berserkers) was created and he pressed ahead with getting programmers involved to help him realise various concepts he and his wife, Joan, came up with.
Ah ‘Flood’… The memories had with this awesome Amiga game back in the day. With its groundbreaking speech effects throughout, Flood proved to be a big hit on the ST/Amiga back in 1990, and so it was inevitable that a sequel would follow. This time the main character, Quiffy, would also look to make an appearance on 16-bit consoles which were starting to take a hold on the gaming public alongside home computers.
The game was being developed by non other than ex-Ocean coder Paul Hughes with graphics by Mark R Jones (Who also worked at Ocean).
Flood 2 promised more of the same of the first game, with a multitude of additional features and bits to improve further on the original (Which sadly and undeservedly never had the full spotlight treatment on its original release). Continue reading →
Thanks to Peter Weighill for the heads up, but some exciting developments over at the WorldofSpectrum as MarkRJoneshasuncovered a rather rare and previously unpreserved clone of the arcade game Popeye cheekily called “Popie“.
Popie looks to be a rather nifty little conversion and certainly the best which the machine has seen. Currently the game has been preserved and we are now awaiting a release on the World Of Spectrum which should be very iminant. Keep an eye out on the newWOSentry which has just popped up.
A short post about Simon Cooke’s SAM Coupe contributions. His unreleased contributions include Populous(incomplete), Bubble Bobble (unattainable license, 1991), Zub (link to download from there – unfinished, but screenshots exist).
Unrelated to Sam Coupe but of great importance is that he worked on a finished cool-looking (at least judging from shots) Prince of Persia conversion to Spectrum that got scrapped due to licence issues, this is a different one from the Russian adaptation made later by another team.
After a long rescue mission, at long last the lost C64 conversion of The Bubbler has been found and released. The added bonus is that the game is fully complete, containing the loading picture, music and sfx.
Developer Matt Young, Sailor/Triad and Jazzcat have been busy at work and reconstructing things into its final state, whilst compressing and bug fixing. The download contains two versions, a trained version and the standard version. All instructions are included.
Although the frame rate suffers due to Ultimates demands on how the display worked, it is a massive finding and still as playable as the Spectrum original. Its yet another one for the archives! Go check it out!
Interesting find on our travels, but as some may well know – the Spectrum version of S.T.U.N Runner wasnt particularly great (Well, the C64 version was only marginally better, but thats not saying much).
However, things could have been a whole lot better it seems, and the postage stamp sized play area could well have been extended. Check out the preview shots here:
A rather different game from the looks of things. Was it merely a set of mockups (Like with what happened to Nemesis on the Spectrum), or was it an earlier version that was canned? One for a bit more research I think
Evan Gowan over at the excellent SnesCentralwebsite has produced a fantastic and heavily researched/documented article on Starfox 2, giving the most complete story about the game that has so far been seen. Id highly recommend checking it out!
This includes many items from various magazines, interviews with internal people and picking apart the sources which were recovered and documenting little findings in there, plus a lot more about the game that sadly never was (And one of the best to never hit the SNES).
Thanks to Andrew Fisher for the heads up, but CVG have recently published an article called The Biggest Games Well Never See, focusing on some of the PC games that are sadly never going to make it.
Including titles such as Fallout 3, The Crossing and Necessary Force.
As you’ll soon begin to discover, there are many times where games are fully completed, but strangely never allowed out of the doors. Moto-X was one such casualty that was completed and then trashed. Often you’d expect this to happen when a game is particularly poor (well, sometimes!), but there doesn’t seem to be too much wrong here.
Moto-X was developed for Nintendo by Software Creations’ Ste Ruddy (Bubble Bobble C64 fame) with a hand from the Pickford brothers over a period of 8 months. This was one of the first titles being developed by Ste Ruddy, after setting up the new Software Creations studio in America.
The game is best described as an update of Nintendo’s Excite-bike on the NES and was actually the second incarnation of the game. An earlier version was canned back in 1992/93 which was to be a mix of Excite-bike and Powerdrift (An interesting combination). Ste used some of the older games routines to create a much-improved title, and with the game play more focused.
The game, although playable, lacked depth according to Ste Ruddy. The game had three skill levels, each of which had five different tracks and a bonus level to get through. The lack of depth was down to the distinct lack variety between the levels. For a machine kicking out titles such as Mario Kart and Donkey Kong Country, Moto-X was distinctively lacking. However things were improved with some superb accompanying heavy metal tunes by audio master Geoff Follin.
So with a fully complete game and full approval by Nintendo, the game was ready to go; but the publishers weren’t so keen. Trimark Interactive suddenly caught cold feet in the console games market, deciding that Interactive Movie games were the future. Their interest wandered away from consoles and the games release was cancelled as a result. Software Creations were fully paid , so the developers didn’t miss out; but sadly gamers did.
Ste Ruddy still has the game on a prototype cartridge, but cannot release it due to legal ties with Nintendo. However you can check out video of the game to see what you are all missing. There were rumblings though that a physical release of the game could be on its way in the near future though. This was confirmed when Piko Interactive obtained the rights to the game and have now got the game available as a physical release. It is great to finally see the game out in the wild!
Case closed!
With thanks to Roberth Martinez for the heads up about the release.
We’ve seen countless many games disappear into the abyss without a screenshot or even a title left behind. This is not the case of Meantime (you may remember this title from GTW64’s coverage), one of the most popular vapourware (not so whimsical actually) according to gamers expectations.
This Interplay RPG evolved from Wasteland engine while sharing same development team, yet its not a follow-up. It came to a halt when the 8 bit market collapsed, bringing the end to the Apple II and C64 editions. It was then later revived in DOS just to come to the same conclusion. With the debut of advanced engines like Ultima VII , the competition would have been very unfair we guess!
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Games That Weren't® is the registered trademark of Frank Gasking.
