Games That Weren't^®

Another title which has had plenty of work on the presentation to feel like it should be more complete, but at this stage there isn’t a huge amount to do.

The game just has you having to avoid balls that are falling from the sky – but there is no real interaction at this stage, just a lot of effort made it seems on the graphics.

Did the game get any further than this? Was it meant for any company in particular? We have the developer’s names listed, so we hope to find out from them very soon what exactly was planned for this game.

Note – the game is not the same as the 1990 Cosmos release.

A promising start of a sort of expanded Connect 4 game – where you must get 5 coloured tiles in a row – taking turns between two players to plot your move.

The game preview kicks straight into a 2 player game, and once you get 5 in a row – that is it, demo over.

At this stage, the game looks pretty promosing – some nice graphics in the game – and overall this could have made a nice budget title. The C64 was just about going in 1993 still commercially. So what happened to it?

At this stage we had no coder credits, but tucked away in the code was “(c) Brian/Graffity”, who was a prolific coder, musician around 1990 onwards and is still semi-active at the moment. So we hope to find out more about this game soon!

Ok, so i’m a little confused with our next title. Cheeky Twins 3 is of course the third game from a trilogy that never was. The game as you might expect should have a cute theme to it, with the previous two titles being a single screen platformer and a bomberman clone respectively.

However, this is a sideways scrolling shooter – which doesn’t seem to have much of a tie to the series apart from the title screen.

But it is a good sideways scrolling preview though – a promising one with some good visuals. There is one level in total, before it continuously scrolls forever.

So how does it relate to the other games? We’re not sure just yet, but hope that Jan Krolzig can tell us more. But also shed light about what happened to the game? Did real life commitments get in the way in the end?

Do you know any more about this game?

I like City Invaders – it is a neat sort of Pooyan clone with a cool main character who pops their head in and out of building windows trying to stop the city invaders.

There isn’t too much to the preview just yet, but its a good indication of a fun little budget title that was due for release by CP Verlag.

So what happened to the title? CP Verlag were still going strong at the time, so we believe that it was real life commitments that got in the way or a platform upgrade.

Do you know any more about this game?

Whilst playing our next entry (which has been out there for a while it seems), something seemed very familiar. The game has quite a Spore-like feel to it, but the main ship looked just like the one from Mutant Zone (Spore 2).

Comparing against that entry, and the resemblance is striking! The ship and the bullets are almost identical, but also the dimensions of the gameplay area match the description in Mutant Zone. This is dated about a year earlier, so is this in fact an earlier incarnation of Spore 2 by Paul?

We tried to quickly confirm this – but there was no evidence in this preview that it was the same game (thanks to Vinny Mainolfi for checking). I am still confident that this is some kind of early incarnation.

There are no titles, credits or sound at this stage – and it isn’t clear if the preview can be completed. There are flashing objects throughout which we can’t seem to interact with.

Paul took a look and confirmed that this is indeed an early build of Spore 2. Not sure yet how it has sneaked out. We hope in the future that Paul will allow us to preserve his disks to put what remains on the site.

Check it out for yourself for now!

A very promising looking puzzler game, which is sort of a mixture of Sokoban and Pipemania with electrical wiring. It is playable, with some cool title presentation – though the options and screen designer areas are disabled at present.

This very much has the feel of a commercial standard title – but we have no idea who it was intended for (if anyone at all). 1992 was still a time when the C64 was fully active, so what happened?

I didn’t think there were any clues in the code about who was behind the game, but contributor Compounded spotted that the credits appear when you leave the game for a while – the credits reveal themselves. Highlighting the stupidity of the web author of GTW clearly! … but anyway, thanks to Compounded, the credits have been established – so its hoped more can be found out soon.

Did a more complete version ever exist?

This is a game which I have known about for many years. I first became good friends with Jason Kelk when I found out that he was a big C64 enthusiast that worked in one of my local computer gaming shops.
When I first got my C64 disk drive, Jason asked me for a few blank disks and copied some of his work onto them for me to check out. These included previews of Warflame, Cyberwing, a Blagger style platformer, a few SEUCK efforts and Dionysus III.

Jason at the time was trying to produce games under his Big Time Software label, and the list was impressive. After seeing Reaxion on the covermount of Commodore Format, I was very excited to see more.

Dionysus III was to be the second title from Jason to go onto the Power Pack, as the title screen shows. What was neat was the inclusion of speech generated by the Superior Soft Speech program (I believe?) which had just recently been put onto a CF covermount. The titles and end sequence were all in place, and a few levels pathched in. The enemies were just borrowed sprites from Reaxion for now, but the main aeroplane sprite was in place.
One thing I always liked as well was the cover of Sometimes by Erasure – first time I had heard the tune before the real one itself.

A very promising preview – which you will see is very familiar to GR9 Strike Force in many ways. The game however never got finished, as Jason lost interest in the project and decided to move onto other things.

At somepoint the preview was leaked out into the wild, so this is why i’m adding it to GTW64 now (in comparison to another preview I have of Jason’s – which he doesn’t want released). I have included Jason’s original file he sent me, as the crack copy has corrupted the title screen and introduction speech. It is the same build of the game.

Hopefully Jason will give his input at somepoint for the Creator Speaks section

A game which the preview text specifies was due to be released on the 15th October 1994. People were asked to keep an eye on Commodore Format for any news and look for their advertisements.

Although the title and static shot suggests a Doom style game – it is pretty much just a 3D maze game where you must find a ladder exit. Unfortunately it isn’t too playable, and is actually very confusing to play – with very slow flick frame movement and unresponsive controls.

It is very possible that the final game would have been a lot smoother – but did it get any further than this? This seems to be the only game that Che Lalic ever did on the C64.

Do you know any more about it?

The game hasn’t got no name, but neither does it have much in the way of things to do at this stage either.

What we have here is a single static screen with a diver character – who must first blow up an obstacle in their path before they can move around the screen. Falling off the edge just makes you appear at the top again.

It looks promising, and seems to be a sort of Mermaid Madness style game in the making. Sadly there are no clues to who was behind the game and what the intentions were for it. Was it for a particular company? Was 1994 the actual year it was in development?

If you know anything more about this game, please let us know!

Horror Drive is a really neat and promising 2 player split screen racer, with a top down viewpoint. Sort of like Rally Speedway, but with far smoother scrolling. The backgrounds are simple at this stage, but maybe more scenery was planned for the final game?

We don’t unfortunately know where this game has come from – it was cracked by a group called Horizon, so we assumed it may have been one of them that had produced the game. The title could also be made up as well, so it could be a tough one to try and get to the bottom of.

However, in April 2024 – Anonymous Contributor found a snippet in Swedish magazine Svenska Hemdatornytt (Swedish Home computer news), issue 9 1989, page 62. It had the story behind the game, and a general article on the history of Horizon as a group with the following about the game:

“The members of Horizon have also programmed games, their first game, Horror Drive, is still unsold and they have lost hope about selling it. But they hope their forthcoming game will sell better. I am taking the opportunity to do a bit of advertising for them, because these persons deserve it. If any game distributor reads this and is interested, write me a letter and I’ll forward it to the Horizon guys.”

This led to some possible credits, which we have listed above and hopefully this will help lead to more information about the title. We thought the game may have been done by Daniel Stenberg, who was Bagder / Horizon.

After getting in touch with Daniel, it was confirmed that it was he and Kjell Ericson behind the title, with Zagor behind the graphics. Kjell believes that they showed it to someone, but it was never finished. It seems this preview is as far as the game got overall, and it was missing things like sound for the high score board.

Also, Kjell had a memory that they needed to have things like oil on the road for the car to slip around, and people waving and when you run them over, you slip in their blood. Kjell also revealed that the name of the game came from the horror that occurred to the unlucky bystanders.

So this unfortunately is all that exists of the game, but at least you can see for yourself the promise of the title. It also means that we can close the case on the title, thanks to the contribution from the Anonymous Contributor, Daniel and Kjell.

Case closed!