Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
Welcome to Games That Weren't!
We are an 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.
Code – Simon Nicol Graphics – Herman Serrano Sound – Mike Clarke
Ten years after Mega Apocalypse, Simon Nicol’s awesome ‘Mad Planets’ conversion was to be given the 16-bit treatment. ‘Apocalypse 2’ was born.
‘Apocalypse 2’ is a one/two player mixture of Gyruss and Asteroids, with a main ship that can rotate 360º after collecting the relevant power-up. You must destroy waves of planets that hurtle along and grow in size if you don’t shoot them early. Once planets are at full size, they take more shots to destroy and speed up the more they are shot. If you thought that was enough, fireballs also appear from nowhere to surprise and destroy you!
A wonderful idea and game which originally started out with the name of ‘Silly Putty’ and later was renamed to just ‘Putty’. ‘Putty Squad’ was the next game in line. Putty is a blue blob that can mould into various different shapes, stretching, bouncing around platforms and absorbing strange creatures in his path in an attempt to defeat the evil ‘Dazzledaze’.
Putty started out on the Amiga and featured jaw-dropping graphics and animations when first hitting screens back in 1991. With strong playability combined with excellent humour throughout, Putty was successful and was unsurprisingly ported to other platforms including the SNES. The Colour Gameboy version was to follow much later…
Eight years on, the then newly revived company ‘Thalamus Interactive’ began in a world dominated by 64/128bit consoles, and began focusing on the 8-bit market that remained with the Colour Gameboy. As a first pitch to Studio 3 (Once ‘System 3’ back then), a demo of Putty Squad was written in a 2-3 week period which demonstrated just how well it could work.
Jon Wells, famous for his C64 work in its later years, coded and provided all the audio delights – whilst Michael Smith provided impressive graphics to push the Colour Gameboy enough to match the 16-bit versions. Andy Roberts took part in the design and project management and then the eventual pitching to Studio 3.
Smooth scrolling, strong graphics, impressively fast drops from height along with an accurate conversion of Rob Hubbard’s C64 I-Ball tunes were a few of the features hoping to win the contract. Only this one preview was created, lacking the features and abilities of the original Putty due to being a small demonstration for Studio 3 – the juicy features would have been added later once things were signed.
It was enough to grab Studio 3 by the balls, and potential was there to be seen. Initial interest was given in Putty Squad being converted, but a tentative budget was allocated and putting it together with the time and monetary constraints was impossible. The conversion as a result was sadly scrapped. Andy Roberts reflected, “Even though the Putty brand is a strong one, it probably wasn’t strong enough.” At the time the competition was fierce on the GBC, and the market was flooded with too many crap licences (‘Mary Kate and Ashley’ anyone?). Putty didn’t seem to fit well into what gamers were buying at the time.
However, all was not lost when Thalamus were given various other gaming jobs by Studio 3 and thus the Putty demo led onto other good things. However, Thalamus Interactive slowly ceased to be, and now Oliver Frey and Roger Kean continue the Thalamus name for their publishing company.
Overall, what remains with Putty Squad on the GBC is a promising demo showing what was possible, and what could have been. Check out the video clip below to see for yourself…
Prompted by a recent discussion on Lemon 64 that cropped up – I realised that I had a bit of a story to share regarding an actual magazine issue that never was. The elusive Commodore Force issue 17.
In addition to this, a forum thread over at the Zzap 64 forum also gives additional input into this feature which i’ve recently updated this article with.
This is mostly credit fixes, addition of extra scans and creator speaks added. Some highlights in particular to check are for Captain Planet, Hareraiser 2, Paperboy 2, Speedboat Assassin, Unnamed Tony Gibbs Game, Street Fighter 2 V1 (Interesting account from James Macdonald!) and Unnamed Tony Gibbs game.
Following on from the exciting launch of the Konix Multi-system emulator and a runnable preview of AMC’89, the guys from the Slipstream: The Konix Multi-system archive have now released the sources which can be grabbed from here:
This has been released with the permission of Jeff Minter himself, and it is hoped that someone will pick up the baton and look to try and complete the game, maybe even trying to reconstruct the Stonehenge levels which are missing from the preview.
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.
