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.

Latest News and Posts

Night Walker

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Now, this title has been in GTW64 before many moons ago – and was swiftly taken out – as it was believed that the game was just released as “The Chess Game” by MicroClassic. Zzap strangely had reviewed the game back in 1986 as a £3.95 cassette game – but no-one had seen or heard of it.

However, some digging by @TheyWereOurGods and @gurtygurt has revealed that the title was in fact released a year before by the same company under the name of “The Chess Game”. “Night Walker” seems to be a re-release of the title which possibly didn’t sell very well first time round and was launched to make up some sales.

It is suggested that MicroClassic only sold games via mail-order, so it could have been sold in very limited numbers. They don’t seem to have done many other games if any at all on the C64. Did Night Walker make it out at all?

But why search for a game which we already have saved? Well, it is entirely possible that Night Walker was released with a different inlay, loading screen, improvements etc. These are all things worth digitally preserving, and so we add the game to the archives to begin a search for this limited release budget title.

Do you know any more about it? Do you have a copy which we can preserve?

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Robotomania

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

A small entry into GTW for a title which we have managed to preserve thanks to the kind loan from collector Havar B. Hojem.

This was a title spotted in Havar’s personal collection which had a home-made inlay produced for another game called Amity Island. This game was discovered on the reverse side of the tape, but not included on the inlay. Curious to what the game was, we were loaned the title and at first couldn’t get anything to load.

It was realized that the files saved on the tape were Game Creator (Mirrorsoft) files saved directly, which must be loaded into the tool and could not be loaded in separately. After that realization, the game loaded fine and we were presented with a simple maze game, where you control a head trying to shoot Daleks.

With huge thanks, Richard Bayliss has very kindly packaged up the game so that it can run independantly from the editor. Richard has added a quick title screen with instructions and compressed the files. Thanks Richard! We have also included the raw files if you want to check them out.

It is very simplistic and only worth a quick play, but then all Game Creator titles are like that. It’s certainly one of the better efforts made in the tool.

Sadly we don’t know anything about who created the game. Clearly it seems to be a title which was done for personal enjoyment, and at best may have been shared with a few friends. But there is a distinct lack of credits which means we cannot re-unite game with author (who no doubt have long forgotten about the title they possibly created as a kid). Havar brought the game in a bundle, where the tapes were owned by the seller’s uncle. We hope that Havar may recall the contact details of the person in particular so we can do some digging.

By putting up the game on GTW64, we hope that some day the author may by chance put in a search for their game and get a pleasant surprise! :)

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

Amity Island

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

A small entry into GTW for a title which we have managed to preserve thanks to the kind loan from collector Havar B. Hojem.

This was a title spotted in Havar’s personal collection which had a home-made inlay produced. Curious to what the game was, we were loaned the title and at first couldn’t get anything to load.

It was realized that the files saved on the tape were Game Creator (Mirrorsoft) files saved directly, which must be loaded into the tool and could not be loaded in separately. After that realization, the game loaded fine and we were presented with a simple Jaws themed game where you actually control a shark that must eat people.

With huge thanks, Richard Bayliss has very kindly packaged up the game so that it can run independantly from the editor. Richard has added a quick title screen with instructions and compressed the files. Thanks Richard! We have also included the raw files if you want to check them out.

It is very simplistic and only worth a quick play, but then all Game Creator titles are like that. It’s certainly one of the better efforts made in the tool.

Sadly we don’t know anything about who created the game. Clearly it seems to be a title which was done for personal enjoyment, and at best may have been shared with a few friends. But there is a distinct lack of credits which means we cannot re-unite game with author (who no doubt have long forgotten about the title they possibly created as a kid). Havar brought the game in a bundle, where the tapes were owned by the seller’s uncle. We hope that Havar may recall the contact details of the person in particular so we can do some digging.

By putting up the game on GTW64, we hope that some day the author may by chance put in a search for their game and get a pleasant surprise! :)

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

It Came From The Desert

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

A pretty famous Cinemaware title which was originally released on the Amiga, PC, Megadrive amongst others – but was also mentioned as having a C64 conversion in the works according to C&VG.

The game itself was inspired by many 1950’s B movies and was very well received. The mention of a C64 version came in a preview within a July 1989 issue of C&VG and was flagged up by Ross Sillifant.

This was from the same time that Rocket Ranger was also converted, so its entirely possible that a C64 version was on the cards – but nothing really more was heard apart from this one mention.

So its very much early days and we need to dig up as much as we can on it. Can anyone find an advert with the C64 specified? Or maybe you worked on the game?

More soon we hope!

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 7 Comments

Death Trap

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: by Frank Gasking

Our next title into the archives is a a scrolling platformer by the name of Death Trap, which was produced by Anco in 1991 and released on the the Amiga and ST. The game was fairly well recieved and was fun enough.

One review in C&VG suggests that a C64 version could well be coming soon (see scans), but by this point Anco weren’t doing a huge amount with the C64 – so could they have really had plans to convert this title across?… Maybe. The game could well have been Anco’s final title planned for the C64 before moving fully across to the 16-bit platforms.

However, apart from the brief mention in C&VG, we have no other information to confirm that something was under way.

Do you know any more about it?

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Zolo

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

This interesting dual scrolling title was written by the brother (?) of musician Nigel Grieve, but didn’t seem to have any company attached to it.  Was it intended for Hewson maybe?

Well, thanks to contributor Gaetano Chiummo, it has been discovered that the game was reviewed in Italian magazine MC Microcomputer issue 65 and was to be newly distributed by a company called Italvideo.  In the review the publisher is listed as Italvideo/Ocean.

Interestingly, Kevin Grieve worked on V – The Computer Game, Knight Rider and Super Bowl for Ocean Software a year before, so was Zolo indeed pitched to Ocean from Kevin? It does seem indeed that there is a certain connection, which only Kevin might be able to reveal. We hope also that Grant Harrison may know more too, as he worked with Kevin a number of times.

The game is a little rough round the edges, but has a nicely animated ship and the tunes are OK by Nigel.

We suspected that the Italvideo link may have been a pirate label, as there were quite a few Italian pirated tapes sold of common commercial titles from the UK, but then Zolo had retained its name. Certainly it was pirated and released under the name of Sistema 2001 by Game 2000.

Thanks to Martin/Stadium64, he directed us to a page on the Retrocollector website which shows that this was a limited Ocean connected release in Italy via Italvideo. Just why Ocean didn’t release the game in some form in the UK, we are not quite sure yet. But this indeed was released somewhere.

Martin in August 2025 found that the game was also included in the compilation Wonderful Hits 2, also published by Italvideo. The box has a copyright of 1989, but no signs of Ocean – but the author credited. See scans for more details.

So there seems to be more of a story to dig out with this one.

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 6 Comments

Unnamed helecopter game

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

An early days entry for a title which was being written by Glyn Williams, who wrote Cholo and Starglider on the C64.

This title was a currently unknown Helicopter game which was to be released by Island Logic (a short-lived software arm of Island Records) back around 1985.

The game was to use a technology called Polyscan, which was developed by the mathematically brilliant Caspar Bowden.  He had created a proof of concept on the BBC Micro, which showed solid-filled 3D polygons.  He managed to get Island Logic to pay him for the technology.

Glyn Williams had just graduated from University, and was brought in along with Joey Headen to take the technology and turn it into a game.  “The Helecopter Game” was born as a game design document and the two worked on trying to get the game working on a C64.

Unfortunately the algorithm wasn’t that efficient, solving the hidden surface issues in an expensive way.  It meant that Glyn and Joey didn’t get any further than technical demos, rendering a Channel-4 style ident with a handful of polygonal shapes was painful according to Glyn.

Joey suggests in a Sinclair User that Island decided they didn’t want to spend any more money and closed it down.  Joey confirmed to us that Glyn and himself estimated how long and how much the game would cost to make, but the board thought that it was too much and cancelled the project.  They then let Glyn and Joey go also.   Joey does not recall the game ever having a title.

Glyn and Joey developed Advanced Music System software for Rainbird on the C64, with Joey developing the MIDI section.  Glyn clarified that as the Polyscan technology was unworkable, they abandoned it when setting up his own company with Joey to produce games.

They however switched to a wireframe based approach, and took advantage of some of the 3D tricks they had learnt.  This would help to produce Cholo and Starglider on the C64.

Sadly, both Glyn and Joey have nothing of the Helicopter game in any shape or form.  It would really be a miracle if something was to surface after almost 40 years.   So its almost very much a case closed for this one.

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 2 Comments

War in Middle Earth V1

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Yet another title for the archives which was in a very different state compared to the final game at one stage. Thanks to Dr Strange/Atlantis for highlighting this title, which has actually been doing the rounds for some time.

This early build of War in Middle Earth is very different to the final version, lacking the green of the final version and a lot of polish. It is very oddly labelled Lord of the Rings 3 too, which suggests that originally the game was meant to just cover a battle in the final book – whereas we believe the final game covers battles across the 3 books (correct us if we’re wrong of course!)

Dr Strange pointed something out very interesting though, that this early edition is rather startlingly like the released ZX Spectrum version in terms of look and feel with its grey and white dominated colours. It suggests that maybe the C64 version was based initially on a port of the Spectrum game – the graphics at the very least, as the charset is identical. The finished C64 edition had improved graphics over the Spectrum version.

So we know clearly that the game was released and changed – but we wanted to hear the story about this earlier build and why it was changed so much for the final version. Was it simply just a starting point that was improved on to make use of the C64’s strengths, is there more to it?

Andy Elkerton shed some light and revealed that the game was in development when he joined Maelstrom as a graphic artist. At the time, the original artist on the game was actually the musician Paul Robotham, which may well explain the quality of the art compared to the final version when Andy redid everything. Interestingly as a side note, Andy reveals that there should have been an extra disk or part which had illustrated glossaries of the characters and monsters in the game, but this seems to be missing – do you know anything more about it?

So this was merely an early demo which underwent a redesign by Andy, and as a result it is pretty much case closed!

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3D Pool V1

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

A very small entry for what was an earlier edition of 3D Pool being written for Firebird, by none other than Paul Hughes.

Nick Pelling had just completed the BBC Micro edition, and Paul was taken in by the amazing achievement by Nick. So Paul took it on himself as an exercise initially to convert the game to the C64.

It seems that the 19yr old Paul had got pretty far too, actually almost complete – all bar a front end. The game apparently also ran very closely to the same speed as the eventual C64 version, even looking very close in look and style. Once things got to a great stage of completion, Paul then decided to pitch it to Firebird – but unfortunately Nick Pelling had already just about completed his own C64 version – and went with that version.

We are also not sure if anything exists of this earlier edition, but Paul has recently found some hand scrawled notes from around 1988, which hopefully he will soon scan and we’ll be able to add to here. Could the game itself be found to show what alternatively the game could have been like?

Unfortunately it is very likely that the game has gone forever – Paul doesn’t hold much hope of it turning up. But you never know! At the very least, we may get to see some notes regarding the game’s development.

For the completed game that was released, check out the game at Gamebase64: http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=4563&d=18&h=0

More soon we hope!

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BMX Racers V1

(GTW64 entry)
Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

An interesting entry for our next GTW comes in the shape of another title which may have had similar issues like Chiller did, and by the same company and development crew.

You may recall that Chiller had an alternative version with Michael Jackson’s Thriller music included, which was taken off the shelves. Well, BMX Racers could well have had a similar situation.

Commodore User magazine reviewed a version of the game which featured a Granny with a stick, moving cars and another biker. Where as it seems the common version of the game actually is quite different, with a completely different track layout, no Granny sprite and a rest at the end of each part. The more common version seems like it was done in an enhanced version of the Games Creator editor (or similar code base at least), where as the original was done purely in Games Creator.

It seems almost that the second game is more sophisticated, so maybe it was decided to flesh the game out a bit more after being criticized for being too simple?

According to contributor, Sean O’Neill (who highlighted this game to us), there was a comment from someone that suggests they brought the first version, but a week later they were offered the 2nd version. So what happened?

Do you have a copy of the original tape with the original game? Maybe its time to dig out your copies and see which one you have? And what is the story behind this game?

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 5 Comments