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 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 quick entry for an educational title which was due for release in 1991 on the C64 by Scetlander, a company based in Glasgow.
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?
Thanks to Shaun for flagging up a title which was the competition winner for a Zzap compo to design your own game and win £500.
This was ran in 1987, and Shaun was the lucky winner – where the game would be then created by Domark’s new budget label called Streetwise – who had earlier published another competition game called “Kat-Trap”.
For reasons currently unknown, the game never surfaced, and neither did the Spectrum compo winner called Pile Driver.
Was it possibly due to Kat Trap bombing so spectacularly that Domark decided not to take a risk again? We’re not sure!
Shaun has for now detailed under Creator Speaks what the game would have been like. Now its a case of finding out if anything was ever started!
A very quick entry for a title which may well be vapourware, but was briefly mentioned in the news pages of Zzap Italia back in 1987.
After the massive success of The Sentinel, it would have been no surprise had a sequel have been in the planning or development stages. Mentioned in the same news item was Revs 2, which we believe would have been Revs+ that was released. Could it be possible that a The Sentinel+ or similar was planned by Geoff?
We’d be massively surprised if anything was started, but you never know – maybe there were plans to expand the game and get a bit of extra life out of the title.
Well, in late 2019 – contributor Fabrizio Bartoloni found a small snippet in Games Machine magazine issue 1 (See scans), where a sequel was mentioned as being pondered. This must have been where Zzap Italia got the information from.
So did Geoff ever get to start his sequel, or was it parked for other productions like Stunt Car Racer?
A very quick entry for a title which may well be vapourware, but was briefly mentioned in the news pages of Zzap Italia back in 1988.
7 Minutes To Midnight we believe was described by Zzap Italia as having a “Plot about a secret agent miniaturized to disable an atomic bomb from the inside”. But around 1988 was a time that Activision (or Mediagenic at that time) were going through a strange phase of cancelling everything and this well could have been scrapped early on.
Fabrizio Bartoloni oddly found an advert in Crash magazine from the same year which had the game on sale for the ZX Spectrum. Was this related (see scans)?
Early days, but we’d be surprised it was even ever started!
Watch this space!
Originally we thought this was a vapourware title briefly mentioned in the news pages of Zzap Italia back in 1988, but Strident did some impressive digging and found that the game did exist and was to be released on the Destiny publishing label. See http://8bitag.com/info/stbrides.html for more details.
The game was a graphic text adventure being produced by the St. Brides development team and was actually completed. It was based on a poem by Marc Peirson, who also did the poem that White Feather Cloak was based upon. Here is what Marc had to say to 8bitag.com:
“As to King, again this was just a bit of fun I wrote based on a drawing that a school friend mine had done of a shaggy monster type wearing a badge that said ‘king’. The friend’s name was Harry Venning, who you may know of as the cartoonist in Stage magazine and the writer of the Claire in the Community radio show. Francis Lee optioned [King] to do a computer game based on it – and that again was the last of my involvement and knowledge of it really. I didn’t know it had been made into a game eventually.”
Destiny had done a deal with Activision at the time to publish their games, which explains why Activision has been linked to the title. It seemed the game had been development for some while, but when things fell through with Destiny, the game would never be released. We have added the artwork as shown on http://8bitag.com/ , which was intended for the cover art and is copyrighted to Francis Lee.
Eventually it was established by contributor Strident that the game would eventually surface via GI Games under the title of The Dogboy, matching the name of one of the characters in the story. Considering that Tim Gilberts converted many of St. Brides’ games, we wonder if he was also involved on this one too. Maybe something of the C64 version could be found?
Most likely a title which is being mixed up with Starslayer – this was a title mentioned briefly in an 1988 edition of Zzap Italia and to be released by Firebird.
Is it indeed the same game, or is there another title to be found on the Silverbird label?
Could well be an open and shut case before we know it!
A very quick entry for a title which may well be vapourware, but was briefly mentioned in the news pages of Zzap Italia back in 1987.
Legendary Wings was a famous 1986 Capcom arcade which strangely never got a conversion, but it seems Activision were planning on signing it up along with Gunsmoke, Bionic Commando and Side Arms. As we well know, US Gold later released those – so was it actually US Gold who was planning a conversion – or did Activision try and sign them up?
Early days, but we’d be surprised if a conversion was ever started!
Watch this space!
A very quick entry for a title which may well have been released, but is yet to be preserved.
The advert describes the game as follows:
“Features include a choice of 4 international teams, full field settings, complete batting and balling averages kept. Your change to improve on England’s recent tour of Australia. ”
The other two games in the advert can be found in Gamebase, but it seems this one is very much at large.
Do you know any more about the game and can you help us find it?
A very quick entry for a title which may well have been released, but is yet to be preserved.
The advert describes the game as follows:
“Invest your money in any of the 233 Companies-Commodities and attempt to gain a controlling interest in 16 of Britain’s major companies!”
The other two games in the advert can be found in Gamebase, but it seems this one is very much at large.
Well, it seems that the company may have gone under before the game could be released, and it was eventually sold to Argus Press Software, who put it on their 64 Tape Computing magazine, issue 8 in 1984.
This has been preserved and made available thanks to the efforts of Fierman! So here it is and enjoy! A game that never got released by its original company, but did eventually surface!
Case closed!
Another potential GTW which was highlighted by Peter Weighill and comes from an advert in the June 1983 issue of Commodore Computing International.
The game was described as so:
“Drive through the mine filled mazes collecting as many money bags a possible before running into a mine. Challenging and fun for all levels of players.”
Interestingly, the other 3 games in the advert (see scans) are all in Gamebase and were published by a company called Luna Software. It is therefore very likely that Money Minefield was by the same developers (hence the credits for now).
Thanks to Richard Bayliss, the full C64 game was found on a Megatronix PD disk, so here it is all fully preserved and confirmed that the game must have had a release.
Marco ‘Exile’ Das got in touch in February 2023, after finding a copy of the game in the wild. He has very kindly backed up the game and has provided a TAP image for the site, along with some photos of hte tape.
Case closed.
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.
