Welcome to Games That Weren't 64!
We cover Cancelled & Unreleased Video games for the Commodore 64 computer. A non-profit large archive dedicated to preserving lost games that were never released to the public, as well as prototypes and the odd preservation of released titles. Our aim to share history and stories from the developers, assets and more before it is too late. GTW has been preserving lost video game history since 1999.
Please Browse our archive and discover the many entries that we host and have saved over the years.
Latest News and Posts
Archer Maclean A8 prototypes and unused assets
Our next Christmas 2024 update sees Games That Weren’t take a look at a series of early concepts and prototypes from the late Archer Maclean’s disks. This includes the first ever look at concepts for an abandoned Atari/Commodore sequel to Dropzone, a special A8 Arcade version of Dropzone, early pre-release Dropzone materials, International Karate A8 prototypes + assets and various IK+ graphical assets.
You can also catch our YouTube video of the various bits and pieces, with commentary. Lets kick things off:
Dropzone 2 concepts
Archer had previously spoken about working on a sequel to Dropzone, where the main character would drop into a cavern environment and go underground. Perhaps he was inspired by Atari’s Major Havok?
We found nothing playable, but we did find a series of graphic files where Archer was playing with the idea, and you can see all of these concepts below in the gallery for the very first time. Continue reading
GTW64 Christmas Update 2024
Our final update of 2024 for the Commodore 64 archive. This year has gone in a flash as always, as we pass our 25th year of Games That Weren’t. We hope to finish with a bit of a bang, and have some surprise findings for you. We hope you enjoy them – here goes:
Wacky Races V1 recovered!
A surprise recovery for the GTW archives to kick things off, with a completely different and full version of Hi-Tec Software’s game (created by a completely different development team).
Rainbow Art’s Apprentice recovered!
The final prototype of Rainbow Art’s Apprentice on the Commodore 64 has also been saved. An early and promising glimpse of what could have been.
Aladdin’s Cave full game recovered!
The complete conversion of Artic Software’s Alladin’s Cave has finally been recovered in its final and complete form. Check out this neat clone of Tales of the Arabian Nights:
Alternative Software’s 666 – Number of the Beast recovered!
No, we had never heard of it either! A complete surprise and incomplete development by Keith Purkiss of a flick screen arcade adventure, similar in some ways to Feud. Very early, but a very large map for you to explore!
Bundesliga 2 game recovered
Thanks to Csaba Virag, a full football management game has been recovered and which doesn’t seem to have been preserved. Still much to learn about this one, but here it is for now:
Mario Bros hacks added – Insect Kill and Clean All
Thanks to Marcin ‘Tenchi’ Świętoniewski, two strange 1994 Polish hacks of Mario Bros have been saved, which contain different sprites and added music. An interesting set of curiosities!
Keith Purkiss archive page added
Keith has very kindly these past few months allowed us at Games That Weren’t to preserve all of his work disks that he recently found (which has resulted in our first four findings above). We have also preserved his master/work disks for the likes of Tiger Road, Rygar, Little Puff, Dragon Spirit, It’s a Knockout, Kenny Daglish Soccer, Lazer Tag, Last Mission, and Snoball in Hell:
Super Hang On entries added
We take a look at what seems to be an earlier build of Super Hang On which snuck out, and also a lost US edition of the game:
Super Hang-On V1, Super Hang On (US edition)
8 new entries added
We have also added a number of other new entries to the archive, including a strange Football game, a lost Goofy game and more:
Computer Theatre, Footy game, Gee Bee Air Rally – tape release, Goofy’s Word Factory, Grand National, Quest for Truth, Street Football, Test Drive 2 – scenery tapes
46 updates added
Then finally, we have been busy making a lot of updates to various entries already in the archive. Please refer to the “History” tab for each entry to see what has changed and been added:
Alloyrun, Armalyte 2, Back in the USSR, Boxing Champion, Colony, Custodian, Devious Designs, Diabolik, Eye Of The Moon, Fight Night V1, Fire & Forget, Force Of The Vulcan, Galactic Conqueror, Garden Wars, Gargantuan, Gauntlet 3, Giana 2 – Arthur And Martha In Future World, Great Giana Sisters, Illusions, Joan Of Arc: Siege And The Sword, Jonny Quest and the Splinter of Heaven, Judge Death, Katakis, Knight Force, Koshimo, Lasertrain, Mars Cops, Minder, Morgol, Off Shore Warrior, Parasol Stars, Parisian Knights, Picnic Paranoia, Pong Mini, Reach For The Moon, Roadwars V2, Scooby Doo, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Star Tech Games, , The Flintstones, The Jetsons, The Omnicron Conspiracy, Trojan, Undead, Unicorn Software titles, Virgin Atlantic Challenge
And that is it for 2024 for the Commodore 64 Games That Weren’t archive. Thank you everyone for all your help and support this year, in what has been a tough year for many reasons. I look forward to bringing you a lot more new discoveries in 2025!
Keith Purkiss C64 Archive
Keith Purkiss was a regular games creator on the Commodore 64 back in the mid-late 80’s and early 1990s, and also created a few games under the pseudonym of Pakman for titles like Dragon Spirit and Little Puff. During his Probe days, he worked on the likes of Tiger Road, Rygar and Lazer Tag which would be released by U.S. Gold / Go!
Although in touch for a few years now, Keith reached out in 2024 after digging out all of his work disks. These would contain unreleased titles such as 666 – Number of the Beast, Aladdin’s Cave, Apprentice and a completely different version of Wacky Races. The links for these pages go to the individual entries we have set up that talk in more detail about those titles. Continue reading
Insect Kill and Clean All
As part of our Christmas 2024 GTW64 update – our next post isn’t quite unreleased games material, but are a set of yet unpreserved Polish games that were released in 1994 and have been preserved thanks to Marcin ‘Tenchi’ Świętoniewski.
Insect Kill and Clean All are essentially strange hacks of Mario Bros by AtariSoft, with added music, different titles and sprites – but essentially the same gameplay.
Both were produced for the Polish market, and came with a strange copy protection where you had to attach a black box cartridge to be able to load the tapes (which is ironic considering that the games themselves are pirated). Continue reading
IK+ design and development notes
For the past year, we have been preserving Archer Maclean’s legacy, saving his source code and various design notes. You can see some of our examples here of recent work as we start to take a look at prototypes and unused materials.
On the request of Chris Wilkins of Fusion Retro Books, we have preserved many work disks of Archer’s – but have also scanned in a plethora of documents and notes which Archer created as he developed his games. These give a fascinating insight into Archer’s process and attention to detail when developing the game. Continue reading
Games That Weren’t featured in 2025 Zzap!64 annual!
The 2025 Zzap!64 annual has arrived and looks great! The biggest surprise was the six page Games That Weren’t tribute feature by Ian Osborne, who had created the article that inspired it all. Talking about how some of the titles in his article were expanded upon.
I kept over the years misspelling Ian’s surname, and seems there were more I’d missed from old write ups on the site. Now fixed, and my apologies once more Ian. I can assure there are no more misspellings and I’ve double checked. Thank you so much for the lovely words!
Order your copy at https://fusionretrobooks.com/collections/2025annuals/products/zzap-64-annual-2025
GTW Highlight No.19: Hydrogenese recovered on the Commodore 64
GTW Highlight No.19: September finally saw the long lost Hydrogenese on the Commodore 64 recovered by CBA/SCS+TRC. A brilliant early look at what could have been an amazing space shooter!
Read more about the title at:
https://gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/hydrogenese/
GTW Highlight No.18: Recovery of AtariSoft’s Stargate (Commodore 64)
GTW Highlight No.18: September was busy, and also saw the recovery of AtariSoft’s Stargate on the Commodore 64 at GTW thanks to Ken Van Mersbergen. Check out Tom Griner’s long lost conversion for yourself at:
https://gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/stargate/
GTW Highlight No.12: The Godfather breakthroughs (SEGA Master System)
GTW Highlight No.12: June was certainly busy, and we did a huge investigation into The Godfather on the Sega Master System + others. It vanished after a rough first cut that wasn’t up to scratch. We made some big breakthroughs in terms of who worked on it:
https://gamesthatwerent.com/2024/06/the-godfather/
GTW Highlight No.03: IK and IK+ prototypes saved (Commodore 64)
GTW Highlight No.3: Our annual #Commodore64 Christmas update saw various International Karate and IK+ prototypes recovered, with other Archer Maclean materials and many other games preserved for the first time. What will we have this year I wonder?
https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2023/12/gtw64-christmas-update-2023/
