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.
Cycleburner was the title of a game which was being coded by the sample maestro himself, Cycleburner (Even Scharning) for the Megastyle group. It was highlighted to us thanks to Roy Widding recently in 2014 as a title that not many people have heard of.
The graphics were done by Rune Spaans, and the game had no SID tunes as such – but a series of very cool samples by Cycleburner.
The game was worked on around early 1990, and you had to control a spaceship flying around and blasting enemies in a desert environment. It was looking very promising according to Roy Widding.
Sadly the title was never finished (although a playable preview should exist), as the devs decided to move to the Amiga platform to finish it off. It was never finished on that platform either when Rune was offered a full time job at Funcom as a graphic designer. This was around 1994-95 time.
Roy contacted the developers, and they all believe there is something to find of the game – but Roy also found something of the game himself, and managed to get these screenshots for the first time to be shown!
The code is being examined and improved, and we hope to show you the final remains of what could have been very soon!
A quick entry for a game which was flagged up by Peter Weighill whilst doing some research.
Zyborian Terror was a game briefly advertised in the likes of Your 64 and Commodore Computing International in 1984, under the main advert of a cricket game called Hit and Run.
All we know is that the game was an adventure – and we assume a text adventure game.
The game was for sale at £7.50 on cassette and seemed to only be available via mail order from a company called Bytewell.
We are not sure if any copies actually sold at all, or if this game is actually unreleased. It is clear however that the game is not yet preserved, and another on the list for us to try and track down! Can you help?
A quick entry for a game which was flagged up by Peter Weighill whilst doing some research.
Hit and Run was a cricket game which was advertised in the likes of Your 64 and Commodore Computing International in 1984, and was a one or two player game where you would captain and select your team in a 40 overs innings match.
30 players were available for selection, offering millions of permutations according to the advert. Conditions would vary from match to match, and the game included the usual run outs, wides, no-balls, byes and leg-byes.
The game was for sale at £7.95 on cassette and £9.50 on disk and seemed to only be available via mail order from a company called Bytewell.
Thanks to contributor Dave Bulwer, the game was recovered from an inherited collection of games, confirming its release which we are pleased to attach here!
Cargo was a game which was being developed by Simon Nicol and Stavros Fasoulas under the Ducksoft Development label, and was meant for Firebird Software.
We were first informed about the title (though without a title) by Simon’s friend Said Hassan, who tells GTW64 that Cargo was a title produced in a single night as he watched them code it.
It apparently was to prove a point according to Said, that a budget title could be written overnight. It had Simon’s star field in the background, and an Amidar style maze on the top. There was to be a Vorpal loader and a cast off Hubbard track, but nothing seems to exist of this. They may not have quite managed to get the tune included – unless a budding hacker can find it tucked away?
Richard Hewison of The Bird Sanctuary (a tribute site to Firebird) couldn’t recall the title, but suggested that at the time it would have likely gone on the Silverbird label. There was no adverts for the game it seems though! Did Simon and Stavros ever even intend to release it?
You can see elements of Quedex and Delta within the game, but also Simon’s distinctive star field. It’s a neat puzzler where you colour in the maps in Painter style, even at this early stage.
We believe that the game is actually complete, just lacking sound effects. If it was intended for Firebird, then we can only assume that TelecomSoft’s buy out signalled the end. We hope to find out more from both Simon and Stavros in the future!
As you can tell, the title is a working title. Football Game is pretty much self explanatory, and was to be a footy game by Zeppelin Games around 1992 time for the C64, Spectrum and Amstrad platforms.
The title was to be an 8 way scrolling overhead football game with all the usual bits and bobs you’d expect from a footy game from that time. One crucial part of the game was that the football would not stick to your feet, but you would move the player and the ball taps in the direction you wish to turn. Kicking distance was determinable by holding down fire for longer.
The game came to light thanks to Duncan Kershaw, who in 2014, dug out a number of documents relating to previous titles and games he was involved in. This included a design document for the Zeppelin game, but unfortunately Duncan could not recall much more about it. The design document was produced by Zeppelin’s own team of producers and passed onto Reflective Designs to see if they were able to produce it.
It seems that the design went through a few iterations, but was eventually never picked up and was left to gather dust. It is believed that no code was ever actually started on any platform – but we’re prepared to be surprised!
Zeppelin went on to release a number of football games, including Graeme Souness International Soccer – maybe this turned into that game? Do you know any more about this game?
A short entry for a recent discovery by Genesis Project in the shape of a sequel to a very early C64 game called Space Action. The game was released in Sweden by Handic Software and was fairly well recieved.
The coder, Arne Fernlund, produced a platformer sequel which was released – but actually had planned to do a proper Space Action 2 sequel. This was discovered by a chap called Spelpappan, who helped to recover the game and wrote a blog entry over at his Swedish games blog. GP got hold of the game and did some quick tidy ups to release the title and get it fully preserved.
The game is at a very early stage, and just has the main ship flying over a nice mountain background. There are no enemies at this stage. Handic were not informed about the sequel, and it seems that Arne just got bored with it and moved onto other projects.
I’ve always found it bizarre that US Gold’s Skweek game never saw a release on the C64, even though it was released on the 16-bits and also the Amstrad CPC. The game was a cool tile based puzzler which was very well received, and saw a sequel in 1991 across all major platforms of the time.
The game was developed by French company Loriciel, which may explain why no C64 version ever made it, but the CPC version did. The CPC was massive in France, so it is possible that US Gold got another company to do the C64 (and possibly Spectrum) editions too.
The evidence we have that Zzap Italia had an advert for the game which listed the C64 version. However, later adverts remove the format – which suggests it could have either have been a mistake or the C64 version was dropped early on. No Spectrum edition was listed at all.
It is very much early days, but it would be great to find that a conversion of this popular tile puzzler existed!
A relatively unknown and unannounced game which was being written by James Smart for Catalyst Coders.
It was James’ first development at the company, and one which he felt was pretty crap and not worth mentioning. Considering we mention pretty anything which existed, i’ve listed it here :)
The title was a working title, with plans to change it later (so to avoid potential legal issues with The Dangerous Sports Club. The game itself got as far as having a scrolling background with some mocked up ‘along the river Thames’ graphics, and a hang-glider.
Unfortunately the game was cancelled when R-Type was running so far behind schedule, they moved James onto that with David Jolliff instead. Their justification likely being that it was early stages anyway and R-Type was the bigger title which was critical to finishing. After the events of R-Type not making it, the game was never resurrected afterwards and left to gather dust.
There was no intended publisher, as there had been no solid talks with anyone at the time – which James believes was an easier reason for it to be canned.
It is likely that the remains of it is gone for good, but James may potentially find some of his old work disks in the future to save it. We’ll have to watch this space!
Another previously unknown game which was to be released on the short-lived RetroSoft label back in 2005.
This was a sort of Bejeweled clone on the C64, written by Jason Kelk – and was shaping up very nicely before it’s cancellation.
Overall the game was nearing completion and just needed some basic tidy ups. Graphically the game is heavily inspired by Reaxion, with similar patterns in the background and using the main sprite temporarily. The game was fully playable and just required a bit of extra polish really and the implementation of a working score panel.
Unfortunately when things fell through with RetroSoft, so did the game too – and it has remained dormant ever since. The game thankfully has now been fully recovered and patched up for GTW64 to release into its archives – with no plans to ever finish the game.
It’s certainly fun to play, but the lack of polish shows in places – but it is certainly worth checking out to see what might of been.
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