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.
A very short entry for a title which may have been something advertised in early magazines.
The game was to be released by Playsoft, but we know very little else apart from this. The game is also part of a series of 3 games in total which includes Infer, Mega Moto and Phantom Rider.
Thanks to Marco Das, we can confirm that it was just an Italian hacked version of Deactivators. The hack hasn’t yet been preserved, so hopefully this will be done in time. As you can see – it does sit within a collector’s archive.
A very short entry for a title which was advertised early on the C64’s life by an obscure postal based company called Custom Software.
In the advert, the game was described as follows:
“Dr Bongo’s plan is to destroy the world, with only hours before his devastaging missiles are launched you locate his position. Your mission is to stop him and be the world’s no.1 hero. The only problem is that he is on a small island in the middle of a Safari Park, and you are outside the main gates, on foot.”
The game seems to have had a very limited release and it seems to be pretty much at large at the moment. A review from Sinclair User June 1983 was made, and the review was not that positive. Suggesting that the game was even completely written in BASIC and slow.
Was the game ever actually released on the C64 properly? If so, where is it and can it be found?
A very quick entry for a proposed sequel which doesn’t seem to ever got past the planning stage.
Black Knight was a late game in the C64’s life, coming out in 1996 and released by Polish games company TimSoft. It was a fair game, but a bit repetitive with its screens.
The ending was revealed recently on C64 Endings, where apart from the Knight and Princess having sex (!), there was mention that Black Knight 2 would be coming soon. It never did, and we were left without a sequel.
It is possible that by the end of 1996, TimSoft decided to call time on the C64 – and any plans for a Black Knight sequel were scarpered. We don’t expect there to have been anything started, but we hope to confirm from the coder himself at somepoint soon!
A short entry for a title flagged up to us by Dan Warren, which is listed as being a Ubi Soft game – but from a bit of initial digging around, we couldn’t find any reference to it online apart from its entry in GB64.
The game is a neat looking isometric game (like Head Over Heels) and was written and designed by a chap called Frederic Kauffman, and is listed as a 1988 release – however it doesn’t seem to be finished, as there is no sprite collision or anything to actually do.
What was this game exactly and was it really for Ubisoft? And how did it sneak out?
Possibly only Frederic himself may know, so hopefully in time we will find him to ask him more about the game. In the meantime, do you know anything about it? Maybe it was finished under a different name?
3D Roam was a game which was due to be released by Swedish company Handic back in the early 80’s, but sadly was never to be (for reasons as yet unknown). It was to be part of a trilogy of games by Arne Fernlund, consisting of Space Action, Space Trap and 3D Roam.
It is believed that the game was possibly dropped due to Handic not feeling the 3D glasses element was too much to add to the release. The game actually does support 3D glasses, and according to sources seems to work very well.
The game is a 3D based game where you control a snake robot in space, with a great looking moving starfield and special effects as you destroy as many Ploffs and Blurps as possible with the snake robot after picking up a special power pill. It’s a very nice game for its age, and a huge shame it never got released.
The game was recently released by Genesis Project and salvaged from Arne’s own work tape, with the final finished copy salvaged after 30 years of gathering dust. It has been a brilliant find, and yet another long lost game saved!
A brief entry for a title that never got very far… not very far at all!
At the end of Rick Dangerous 2, things are left open – suggesting that a 3rd game was going to continue the adventures of Rick Dangerous. However it was never to be, and the character was never revisited, apart from a 2 1/2 demo game on an Amiga covermount.
Had a 3rd game been planned, it may have skipped the C64 platform anyway due to Core moving away from the platform shortly after Rick Dangerous 2 was released. But Simon Phipps confirmed that they kept it deliberately open, but there was no demand to do a 3rd game and in the end they just never came back to it or did anything more. They moved onto new projects and Rick was retired off …
It was thought that Tomb Raider originally started out as a Rick Dangerous title, but this was never the case. Simon suggests that if Rick was to come back, it may have been in a 1970’s Austin Powers way, but if he ever does … it will never be on the C64!
So with nothing ever started, it is a nice and simple case closed!
A short entry for what possibly might be an earlier edition of Samuari Warrior that exists with a much larger and open world experience.
It is suggested from a snippet on the game that it may have had a lot of features in from the start, which were later cut when they realised memory was too short. What kinds of features were these? We do not know, but hope to find out soon and see if there is something potentially which could be interesting to see.
Do the coders still have anything or earlier builds of the game showing something rather different overall?
Well, Craig Grannell has confirmed that there wasn’t so much a C64 game created and much content cut out, but that scripts and ideas fell by the wayside as the programming happened to try and squeeze everything in (as a single load). It is very unlikely that there was ever anything more than what we got to see – though some characters and graphics were likely cut from the final game that were created. Could these be found and shown? Who knows … but it is unlikely.
Craig also very kindly passed on the original transcript of the feature he did with Doug Palmer on the game.
A quick entry for a title which was advertised within a Players Software inlay for Steel Eagle for all Players Premier titles.
3D Snooker was listed as a game available for all the key formats, including the C64.
Not to be confused with the Championship 3D Snooker game that came out later on by Zeppelin, this was a different title in 1990 – which did see release at least on the ZX Spectrum.
What happened to the C64 edition though? It’s early days yet, with no indication of credits – but we hope to find out more soon.
A very quick entry for an educational title which was due for release in 1991 on the C64 by Scetlander, a company based in Glasgow. The game was released on the ZX Spectrum and various other platforms.
We know that a C64 version existed, as David Jolliff confirmed he was the coder of the entire series of games on the C64.
Only currently Henrietta’s Book of Spells seems to have got a release, so we now begin a hunt to see if the game can be found.
Was it just released in limited numbers, or did Scetlander go under before it could see any sales?
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