Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
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 since 1999.
Please Browse our archive and discover the many entries that we host for many different platforms.
After 25 years of being in the wilderness, Robotron 2084 for the Texas Instruments machine has been uncovered by TI enthusiast Bryan Roppolo for the TI-99/4A Videogame House website.
A neat little conversion which can finally be savoured be sure to check it out! (Thanks to Fabrizio for the heads up!)
Direct source: http://www.videogamehouse.net/gamemain/cartsnr/robotron/
After some digging around and very careful tape backing up, Jeff Minter has discovered and released a whole range of unseen Llamasoft games on the Vic 20 platform (and one on the Commodore PET). In maybe a weekend of preservation fever, some of these games may have just been saved in time before Jeffs work tapes decayed for good.
Theres some nice titles discovered here, not on the scale of “Hellgate” or “AMC”, but very nice none-the-less and definately worth checking out
Checkout the things that unfolded : http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?t=58477
and downloads themselves at : http://www.medwaypvb.com/llamadloads.htm
The guys at World of Spectrum have just worked with Dean Hickingbottom to recover remains of a rather neat little game called Ninja Grannies which was developed by Clockwise Developments. Well, its a one on one beat-em-up which isnt Street Fighter 2, but its quite a comical little game.
Unfortunately no publishers wanted the game, and so it remained unpublished. Spectrum and CPC versions were developed in parallel, and its believed a C64 version was also in development (Of which an entry exists on GTW64). Hopefully other versions will follow through in the future.
Grab it here, and enjoy!
Catalypse was a pretty nifty C64 sideways shooter which challenged the likes of Armalyte and Delta towards the end of the C64s lifetime. Sadly Zzap 64 were strangely critical of the game and gave it a low mark, although the game is quite awesome from its intros, the game and the end sequence.
Recently the guys at ready64.org interviewed Andrea Pompili and managed to get an unreleased version of Catalypse which features a number of bug fixes, some including a level 2 loading screen, fixes to the bosses of 1st and 2nd level, etc.
Grab the new version from here:
http://ready64.org/giochi/scheda_gioco/id/2710/catalypse-1.1
If also you wish to read the interview with Andrea Pompili, then check it out here: (Note that its all in Italian, and you may need to run it through a translator!)
http://ready64.org/articoli/leggi/idart/79/intervista-ad-andrea-pompili
Thanks to Peter Weighill for highlighting, but the World of Spectrum have recently recovered another unreleased game, this time an early version of Basket Master called Fernando Martin Basket Master
Now, this particular version was in development with support by Dinamic, but the owners decided that deadlines were being missed and the game was reassigned to another programmer. The game used the graphics that were already created, but the new programmer did the game code itself from scratch. Apart from a mention in Micro Hobby magazine in 1986, the original BETA version has never surfaced until now.
It begs the question now if a similar fate happened to C64 and Amstrad conversions, with the C64 version being done I think in-house by Gari Biasillo.
But for Spectrum owners, check out the findings and read more details over at the WoS entry here:
Thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni for the heads up on these 3 Atari ST games which never saw the light of day, including the recently recovered Highway Encounter game (Which is believed to be pretty much complete, though lacking on music).
Included in the list are Artic Moves and Laser Squad 2. Visit the Atari Mania website link below for more details:
http://www.atarimania.com/list_games_atari-st-unreleased_licence_18_S_G.html
A while back you may remember when we mentioned the Zap BBC game which was being uncovered by Jamie Woodhouse (Creator of Quak on the Amiga/PC and GBA) which never got released, well Retro Software have recently picked up the game and have made it available and for sale in proper inlays very much in Psytronik style with professional quality and duplication.
Zap2
Uploaded by qwak2. – Watch game reviews, trailers, and walkthrough videos.
Head over to Amiga Games That Weren’t for four new entries!
Amiga Putty Squad isnt the only version of that game which wasnt released. aGTWs detour into the world of the Playstation 2 and the unreleased Putty Squad PS2 fills in some gaps about the Amiga version. Andy Roberts answers our questions.
Siegemaster is a strategy and RPG game which demonstrates that a full review in a magazine (the notoriously unreliable Amiga Action) is no indication that a game was released. We speak to Edward Grabowski about his game.
Finally, John Dale talks to aGTW about two of his games. Pipeline is an early version of the game that eventually became Pipe Mania and Pipe Dream. This pre-release version differs from the final game in a number of ways. John created another puzzler called Rotoplex. Unlike Pipeline, this game was not eventually released.
Trojan was a Capcom arcade title which was due for conversion across to the likes of the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 in 1987. Tasked with the conversion for Elite Software was Durell Software, at least for the ZX edition.
For years, much was unknown about it – until in more recent years it was established that Rob Hubbard had composed a some tunes for a game called Trojan. Clive Townsend then confirmed he had also developed the Spectrum edition, and had all of his Microdrive disks backed up by Steve Brown of TZX Vault- which revealed playable remains of the game. Continue reading
Amiga Games That Werent dips into the deep pool of unreleased Wolfenstein 3D and Doom clone engines on the Amiga:
Alastair M. Robinsons AMRWolf is an early texture-mapped and ray casting engine created using the Amigas Copper Chunky mode and a combination of AMOS Pro and machine code. Alastair returns to the pages of aGTW to talk about his engine.
Alex Amsel, of XTreme Racing fame, discusses his Dent A Wolf / DentECTS / Dentaku-26 engine. Two versions of the engine exist; a basic release intended to attract fellow developers and a more advanced version for publishers to view at the European Computer Trade Show (ECTS).
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Games That Weren't® is the registered trademark of Frank Gasking.
