Cancelled, Unreleased and Lost Video Games for the Commodore 64 Since 1999
A very quick update tonight on GTW64 with some info from Gary Mays on Swords and Sorcery and also the release of a very early isometric prototype from Lynsoft called Cops and Robbers (Working title we believe):
Check out at the usual address… http://www.gtw64.co.uk
An early preview of a C64 game called ‘Fox’ has been found and preserved over at gtw64:
Check it out at: http://www.gtw64.co.uk
GTW64 has had a number of updates over the past few weeks, including:
Check out the updates at http://www.gtw64.co.uk
Thanks to Encore (Nothing to do with Elite I might add), a contributor on Lemon 64 – a range of unused sprites have been found tucked away in the game.
Ever wondered why so much was missed out of the conversion, well it seems the likes of the break dancing skaters were meant to have been…
Maybe they just ran out of space?… or just time whilst developing. This suggests that there could actually be some character based assets hidden away too, so if we find anything we’ll report it back here.
Occasionally GTW64 is passed on software which did in fact get a release, but a very limited one and which has not yet been preserved for others to enjoy.
Joe and the Serif is one such game, preserved by a contributor called Pudva, this is an interesting game released in Hungary (May need to know some Hungarian to play the game :) ), which also saw a release on the C16/+4
You can grab a copy of the game here.
A big thanks to Pudva for digging this out, and Puchala László for the name correction.
NOTE: This was originally published back in 2011.
It’s that time of the year again. The Xmas update of Games That Weren’t is now launched, with plenty of findings and new materials, including:
And a little hint of what’s to come in 2011…
‘STARGLIDER 2’ – All remains recovered and being worked on.
Enjoy at http://www.gtw64.co.uk
Carl Muller did a fantastic job squeezing in Speedball 2 onto the Commodore 64 back in 1991. However, it was at a cost in various areas … and most notably was for some of the in-between screens.
Commodore Format in particular had printed a much higher quality version of the defeat image and larger than what was in the final game. Carl luckily still had it, so here it is:
Hopefully we may see more materials, and possibly earlier builds in the future.
Now for something which isn’t worth a full entry on the GTW64 site, but is worthy of a mention.
Recently a prototype of System 3’s 1991 racer/shooter Turbocharge on the Commodore 64 has been uncovered by TMR/Cosine, originally preserved to obtain its tunes. The main difference compared to the final game in this one level preview is that the game music is composed by Reyn Ouwehand, who was to be the original composer for the game. Music was switched to both Sean Connolly and Marc Francois towards the end of development.
Reyn’s music covers all sound channels in this version, compared to Sean/Marc’s music which was just 2 channels to leave the 3rd sound channel free for SFX.
From what I can see, there is very little else that is different compared to the final game – nothing seems to be that different graphically, though there may be some very subtle gameplay tweaks. The final game felt a little more solid.
You can now grab the turbocharge-proto file and play on an emulator. Enjoy!
Although a few weeks old news now, with the addition just now of some previously unseen development materials, we thought it would be worth mentioning news on the main site about the up and coming new development.
That’s right, with the original salvaged materials – the game is finally to be completed with around 25 lines of parallax and 12 levels of action. The game is pretty much being done from scratch, improving vastly the amount that will be squeezed into the game.
More details, including the original and scrapped development from 1989 can be read about here: https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/hawkeye-2/
With thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni regarding materials from the new version (which seems to have stalled).
Dragons Lair was a technical marvel in the early 80s with its impressive Laser Disc technology. Elite jumped on the bandwagon with their licence of the popular cartoon series.
Whereas Dragons Lair was heavily changed for its home conversions, Elite decided to go one better. Originally starting out as a text only adventure, the plan for Scooby Doo grew to include pictures and finally extra interactivity to turn it into an 8-bit laser disc game.
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