Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
Welcome to Games That Weren't!
We are a 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 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!
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!
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.
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?
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