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.
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!
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.
Finally, in October 2025 – Paul St. Cyr got in touch to provide a copy of the VIC-20 game to add to this archive too, so here it is!
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!
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