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 short entry to highlight that before the release of Yes, Prime Minister by Oxford Digital Enterprises for Mosaic in 1987, it had been Ram Jam Corporation originally working on a game for the publisher in 1985. However, it was under the name of Yes Minister.
The game was scheduled for release back in late 1985, but was then pushed back to early 1986 to be re-named and coincide with Yes, Prime Minister being put out on telly. The game was cancelled though for reasons as yet unknown, but around 12 months or more later, it was announced that a development by Oxford Digital Enterprises was due for release (and was released).
So the question is what happened to the original development? How far did it get and why was it cancelled? We hope to learn more in the future – but if you know anything more, please do get in touch.
Many of us played the Indiana Jones 3 platformer game on the Commodore 64, but missed out on the SCUMM engine graphic adventure game that 16-bit users got to enjoy.
In 2012, that was set to change thanks to a developer called Brick Bambi, who set themselves the very ambitious task of trying to convert the game to the Commodore 64. The attempt was pretty amazing, and a good looking conversion was really coming together after a few years work.
Brick Bambi produced a series of videos showing the game in action and their progress, but then everything just stopped. On Forum64.de, Oliver Lindau confirmed speaking with the developer at Gamescom 2018 and that they had abandoned the project.
Very sad to hear this overall, and it means that this homebrew conversion goes into the archives. We hope that some day we’ll be able to see something of Brick Bambi’s work in action and be able to play for ourselves – or even for them to come back to the project and consider finishing. It would of course be an amazing achievement to go alongside the Monkey Island conversion that is underway (as of 2025).
Our next entry is a bit of a strange mystery overall, flagged up by Martin/Stadium64. Although Skateball appears widely available online, no known original physical copy with this version on tape or disk has ever been found.
GB64 and Lemon64 list Skateball as the US version of Skate Wars – though evidence suggests the game was just released under the title Skate Wars in both regions rather than Skateball. While Skateball was advertised and reviewed (notably in Zzap64 in October 1989) as a C64 title, it seemingly never launched under that name at that time. Instead, it appeared roughly a year later as Skate Wars, which was re-issued on various platforms.
Skateball oddly was released on other systems in the UK like Amstrad, Spectrum, and Atari ST, but likely never officially on the C64 from what we can see. The existing C64 cracks of Skateball that exist (some traced back to the scene group Radwar, who implemented the copy protection) suggest unofficial circulation.
Given the lack of a physical boxed release and missing originals despite UBIsoft’s prominence, the Skateball version of Skate Wars on the C64 may well be a game that wasn’t – in that form at least! We hope to learn more soon – but if you have a physical C64 copy of Skateball (and not Skate Wars), please do get in touch!
Infinite Inferno was developed by Pontus Henningsohn and Staffan Hugemark, who collaborated on the storyline. They signed a contract with Swedish mail-order company Computer Boss International (C.B.I.) in Eskilstuna. C.B.I. passed the game to the UK company Arcade Systems Ltd for publication.
Thanks to Martin/Stadium64, we learn that due to “miscellaneous issues”, the game was never officially released. C.B.I. was a major Swedish mail-order game distributor in the 1980s and regularly advertised in Datormagazinet.
Infinite Inferno was listed for sale at 269 SEK in Datormagazinet issues #4/1986, #1/1987, and #2/1987, but subsequently disappeared, suggesting there may have been a very limited release or possibly none at all.
It remains unclear if Infinite Inferno was ever sold beyond test marketing or if copies exist outside of collector circles. The GB64 database lists the year as 1985, but there may be later editions credited to C.B.I yet to discover. If you have a copy by C.B.I, please do get in touch!
A recently acquired copy of Competition Karate by Martin/Stadium64 includes a reference chart inside the card folder mentioning a sequel in development. However, this sequel was never released.
The game was also developed for the Apple II, likely before the Commodore 64 version, so the question is whether a C64 version was ever started or not.
If you know anything more, please do get in touch.
In 1986, the Swedish computer magazine Datormagazin launched a programming contest in their second issue, running from August 21 to December 31. The contest accepted entries in two categories: Games and Utilities, allowing any programming language or tools, including Game Maker and The Quill.
We learn of this thanks to Martin/Stadium64. Hundreds of submissions were received, but exact numbers per category are unknown. Results were announced in the June 1987 double issue (4/5). The top three game entries were:
Hats by Albert Schnelzer (age 15, Karlstad) – A climbing game coded in machine language, praised as very professional. Albert reportedly spent nine months developing it.
Baldorfs hämnd (Baldorfs Revenge) by Mårten Johansson (Lund) – A Swedish adventure game noted for its humour and strong programming.
Red Fox by Joakim Karlsson (Asarum) – An honourable mention for a shoot-’em-up game.
Datormagazin aimed to help winners bring their games to market, possibly collaborating with American Action. However, American Action faced difficulties and eventually closed, leading to these games fading into obscurity.
We hope that these games can some day be found, and if you can help – please get in touch. It would be great to also try and find any other submissions for the competition that were submitted too.
Thanks to the amazing recovery work of team member Csaba Virag, yet another full game has been recovered – this time a complete Hungarian graphic adventure game called The Mystic Zone.
In 1991, Hungarian magazine 576 KByte held a game developer competition, where a lot of entries were made. From this, The Mystic Zone was submitted and eventually shown in the October issue of the magazine, declaring that 576 KByte would later be publishing the game.
Unfortunately, they would never get to publish the game due to copyright issues. You see, the game was based heavily off an 1984 Fighting Fantasy-like book called “The Weird Zone”, released and written by Christian Black. In 1986, it was translated to Hungarian and released by the publisher “Móra” and was one of the first (if not THE first) Fighting Fantasy like-books released there.
At the start of 2025, Csaba got hold of disks from Zoltán Áprili (Zolee / Reds), who was the chief editor of 576 at the time. Within the disks, the full finished version of the game was found, covering two disk sides in total.
It’s a wonderful finding, and hopefully some day someone will decide to do an English translation. If you know Hungarian though – then enjoy this wonderful graphic adventure game and yet another title saved from obscurity.
The original Moonspire game released on the Commodore 64 in 2016 was a wonderful cross of Paradroid and Cybernoid which I really enjoyed. When I heard about a sequel, I was very excited – especially with the prospect of the game being a 512K cartridge release.
Sadly it was never to be when it was decided by the programmer that the game would not be finished, and was cancelled due to a lack of free time. The game as a result in its final form was released at Revision 2021.
It is a huge shame too as the title looks like a fantastic upgrade to the original game, especially in the graphics department and could have been very special indeed had it been finished. In this one-level preview, the aim is to hack at least 80% of computer terminals scattered on the draxx ship you infiltrated, then evacuate by finding the evac pad located somewhere on the ship.
To hack terminal simply walk into it. You’ll find out that some of the enemies can’t be destroyed/killed so you have to avoid them. It takes around 12 minutes to complete the game in full speed.
We hope that the team change their mind, but for now this is unfortunately going into the GTW archives for the foreseeable.
Bug Off is a 2018 title inspired by Galencia, developed after Marcel Lansing saw Jason’s game and felt inspired to create something with a similar impact.
Having worked on various titles across different Commodore machines, Marcel set out to develop Bug Off as a port of The End by Stern – an arcade game where aliens swoop down to steal bricks and spell out “THE END”.
Development began back in 2018, unusually starting with the loader, intro, title screen and game over sequence – with the gameplay itself left until last. As time went on, Marcel found the project increasingly complex, and eventually motivation waned before completion.
Despite this, the game reached a relatively complete state, featuring functional gameplay with descending enemies and an impressive mothership battle. However, Marcel himself feels the gameplay still needs refinement and isn’t quite up to the standard he envisioned.
Visuals were created by John “Hend” Henderson, and the soundtrack by Richard Bayliss. Although Marcel once considered auctioning a single physical copy of the game for exclusivity, this idea was shelved due to the contributions of other artists.
At present, Marcel isn’t looking to release the game either in a finished or unfinished state – due to lack of motivation, but also partly due to concerns about the cracking scene, and not wanting to see an unprotected version distributed with added intros or modifications. Hend also plans to reuse some of the graphical assets in future productions.
While the situation might change in the future, Bug Off remains unreleased for now. Any glimpse of it comes via the surviving visuals and soundtrack – a promising but shelved creation from a developer who clearly poured a lot into it.
A short entry for a title that may or may not have ever been released.
This was an expansion pack that would add 10,000 new words for Magic Voice with disk-accessible libraries – where apparently vulgarities would not be included!
Do you know anything more about it and can you help preserve it?
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