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.
Retro Gamer issue 113 had once featured an excellent feature on the trilogy of Shadowfire by Martyn Carroll. Trilogy? Well, you’ll need to check out the article to find out more details about the 3rd game (as well as get an insight from the original developers).
Part of the feature included the uncovering of a concept document for Shadowfire 3, which was discovered by Dennis Gustafsson, whilst digging out some other materials for Martyn.
The document was given to Dennis by Ally Nobel whilst at Denton Designs between 1991 and 1995 time. Rage absorbed Denton by 1995, and sadly Shadowfire 3 was a casualty of this. The game was planned for development on the PC (and later PlayStation and Saturn)… the Amiga wasn’t thought to be in the plans due to it being a bit late in the day.
Thanks to Martyn and Dennis on their rescue attempts on digitally preserving the document, we are very happy to release the document (thanks also to Ally Nobel for giving us the go ahead). It’s a wonderful document, with some great concept sketches throughout. Take a look of what could have been in this incomplete trilogy!
A quick addition showing a rather different looking Knuckle Buster game on the C64 by Mat Sneap. Luckily in this case the preview has been around for some time. The thing is that some people have specified that they prefer the preview to the final game. Do you agree?
Here is a comparison between the early version title screen and final version:
V1 title screenFinal title screen
And now the game itself:
V1 gameplayFinal gameplay
If you want to check out both versions yourself, then grab them from here:
The first update for March this year. Hopefully some findings coming up very soon, with some exciting developments bubbling up. Check these out for now…
Andrew Morris has been allowing us to preserve some of his disks to show incomplete/unused materials to the world, and recently we have discovered the assets to the likes of Kikstart 2 and Cosmic Causeway and various others.
This is a recent update to the post I did previously on just Kikstart 2 and Cosmic Causeway assets to expand and include more recent findings. Some will have been commercially used, but there are a few bits and pieces to check out.
If you’ve been checking out GTW for some years now, you may recognise the Apocalypse and Putty Squad write ups. They are indeed nothing new, but reviews that were salvaged recently from the old site.
I’ve just quickly tidied them up and added them in. If you haven’t read them before, then enjoy! :)
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…
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.
