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.
From the archives of Atari graphic artist Jerome Domurat, archivist John Hardie found a disk labelled “Earthquake”, and so begins our look at yet another lost Atari game.
John got in touch to flag his finding with us, which he originally posted about on the AtariAge forum in June 2025. On the disk, he found a series of graphic images that show many elements of a possible earthquake type of game with buildings, debris and a fireman. Continue reading →
Thanks to Csaba Virág, we’ve been given a rare bug report video from 1990 and for Novotrade’s Bugs Bunny’s Cartoon Workshop package. This has been preserved by Péter Gyöngyössy, who found and digitized the tape.
Csaba’s friend Peter was just walking along a street during a council clean up in Hungary, where he noticed a pack of old PC magazines still in packaging. Found among them a VHS tape, which contained a bug report from the game Bugs Bunny’s Cartoon Workshop. The game was developed in Hungary and one of the developers or the testers in the video speak about a strange bug which affect audio and video functions of the game.
The game was also developed for Amiga and Mac, but unfortunately those versions were never released. Another entry for the site in the future! Continue reading →
Thanks to the brilliant preservation work of Steve Brown of the TZX Vault, we are proud to present for the very first time, an extremely early Jeff Minter title from 1981. This was for the ZX81 and has been missing for 44 years – yet to be preserved, until today! Here is a version of Conway’s Life simulator from Jeff called Fastlife and another piece of history saved.
What is intriguing, is that the game was advertised just once for the ZX81 as part of a compilation from DK’Tronics, including Deflex and 3D3D, which Jeff also created. However, after that – “Life” was oddly removed and replaced very quickly on the compilation by Centipede. This compilation became the commonly known version, but no-one seemed to have a copy with the originally intended “Life” on it. Continue reading →
Thanks to the incredible efforts of our friend LiqMatrix, the KATT (Keyboard And Terminal Technology) Games Master, an extremely rare mid-1990s DOS gaming keyboard, has been preserved for everyone to explore.
This unusual device came with interchangeable “mats” that customized the keyboard for specific games, from jet cockpits to RPG character sheets. Despite its innovative design, it was not a commercial success, and very few examples survive today. Continue reading →
A short entry for now to highlight that Ocean Software had once signed a deal with Electronic Arts to convert a bunch of their SEGA Mega Drive titles to the Amiga. One of those titles would be a conversion of NHL Hockey.
Now, ports of Shaq Fu and Jungle Strike would make it, but NHL Hockey would never see the light of day, even though its suggested by Amiga Games magazine from July 1994 that it would be coming soon. So what happened, and was anything ever started? Continue reading →
A CIA Agent is viciously murdered in a top class New York Hotel and suddenly you’re the number 1 suspect. You’ll find yourself thrust into an ingenious plot by a murderous clutch of financiers with world domination on their mind. You have only 24 hours to find the Deadlock files — the key to proving your innocence and exposing the conspiracy. Can you clear your name? Can you save the nation?
That was the blurb from advertising for a lost title called Conspiracy: The Deadlock Files (no relation to the Deadlock strategy games released years later by Accolade), a title which was an early VGA adventure game from Accolade, which claimed to be the first “fully digitised adventure game with 256 colour video graphics”.
It was expected to be a “six disk” game and would support Tandy, CMS and AdLib sound. Conspiracy would also support CGA and Hercules, and would require 512KB RAM. It was expected to retail for $49.95 and was due to be released in the third quarter of 1989. Continue reading →
You may think you’re looking at a PC Engine title, but instead – here’s an Amiga game you likely have never heard of. An early and impressive PC Engine style beat-em-up called Path of the Little Dragon (a working title). The game was being developed at Imagitec from between 1988 and 1989 that was coded and designed by Che Guevara John.
This was an original title that Che developed to try and take full advantage of the Amiga hardware (dual playfield, parallax scrolling, copper/blitter and hardware sprites). The idea was to deliberately replicate the look and feel of the PC Engine import titles that were becoming popular in Europe at the time.
One level was overall developed as a technical demo with an in-house artist (unfortunately their name cannot be recalled), with a view to then refine and expand the gameplay/design elements back in 1988. The game was a sort of souped up version of Kung Fu Master, where you would scroll from right to left and carry out various kung fu moves on different enemies that block your path. It isn’t clear if there were plans for additional gameplay elements. Continue reading →
As we crept into 1994, there were still very decent Amiga titles seeing release – and yet another promising looking title was the sequel to Blues Brothers – The Blues Brothers: Jukebox Adventure. This time though, it was just Amiga users who would get delights of the famous duo – well actually, only SNES, PC and Game Boy users would ever get to play the game. The Amiga title would disappear into the ether and become one of the big Amiga mysteries.
However – that wasn’t before getting fans excited via a series of previews, but even reviews too. In 1994, Joystick magazine published a full review for both the Amiga and PC. The article described it as a lively and colourful platformer, distinct from the earlier Blues Brothers game but still firmly in the arcade-action mold. Continue reading →
Originally debuting in arcades in 1988 under the title of Meikyuu Jima, Irem’s quirky puzzle-action game centred on freezing enemies into blocks of ice and kicking them across the stage to build paths or knock out foes. Its mix of strategy and arcade action made it stand out, and in 1990 it was ported to the Famicom, where western audiences came to know it as Kickle Cubicle on the NES.
With Irem gaining a reputation for strong PC Engine conversions, a version of Meikyuu Jima was announced for the system as Meikyuu Jima Special. It boasted over 100 stages, nearly double that of the arcade original, alongside new mechanics involving springs and hammers to redirect ice blocks. Magazine previews also suggested it was ready to hit store shelves in March 1991, even promoting merchandise such as a plush Kickle toy. Continue reading →
Some prototypes for the PC now, and with Alien Olympics, which was released on the platform by Mindscape in 1994. These are two particular builds from 10/08/94 and 05/10/94. As you would expect, there are significant differences between the two builds.
The earliest has the titles, but is missing all the final presentation screens and has a different name selection element and no character select screen. Most of the events are also missing, and some of those present are not quite finished or heavily bugged (the game will crash at some points). Continue reading →
DISCLAIMER: We are a non-profit digitisation project, aiming to digitally preserve software and history which would otherwise be lost for good. If for any reason there is anything that you do not wish to be on the website, please contact us for removal.
Games That Weren't® is the registered trademark of Frank Gasking.
