Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
Welcome to Games That Weren't!
We are an 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.
Thanks to Andrew Braybrook, rare prototype Paradroid screens on the Commodore 64 (including early unused “fishbone” designs) were preserved for the excellent Graftgold book by Retro Fusion Books. Many didn’t make it inside, but thanks to Ste Day, here is a glimpse of them all in full.
The game itself was created by Davor Magdic, and was reviewed by most major ZX Spectrum magazines of the time but disappeared without a trace and never made it out onto shelves. It was essentially a 3D version of Pac Man and each level was a recreation of the original Namco mazes. Continue reading →
Following on swiftly from the amazing recovery of Monster Muncher on the VIC-20, we now have the Commodore 64 edition of Stargate by Atarisoft for you. A long lost development by Tom Griner which has been part of our search for many years now.
It is all thanks to the brilliant Ken Van Mersbergen for his preservation efforts and saving the title for Games That Weren’t to add to its archives. It is another case pretty much closed!
Monster Muncher was a simple Pac Man clone due for release on the Commodore Vic 20 by Spectrum Games back in 1983, and was fully advertised too. The ZX Spectrum version was known to see release and had been available for some time – though the VIC 20 edition was missing.
What is particularly interesting about this title is that it was written by Matthew Smith of Manic Miner fame, and took a few hours or so to write. According to Matthew, he sold the game to a few people himself, but that was it. Though accounts change slightly in a different interview with Matthew.
As well as preserving unreleased games, we also try and preserve titles which are known to be released, but are not yet digitally preserved. We have another two Commodore 64 games for you today, as well as some extras which are unfortunately not working. Click each title to download.
A previously unpreserved SEUCK sequel by Outlaw-Emix Software in 1991 which has been found and recovered by Csaba Virag on some old disks that were very kindly donated by Zsolt Tarczali (who had sent Csaba hundreds of disks for free). When prompted with “:”, enter “VARAZSOL” (without the quotes).
A currently unpreserved 1984 educational title from Kerian software. It’s listed on Retrocollector.org with some scans, but there is currently no TAP image and its not in Gamebase 64. This was found in a bundle of games (without an inlay sadly) at Level Up Games in Canterbury.
Along with Heli-Maths, I found a few blank cassettes that had some recordings on. They seem to be BASIC programs that were saved – possibly experiments or type-ins from a magazine. Unfortunately, after numerous attempts to try and load – I didn’t have any joy. The above download are a set of DMP files I created on my DC2N and the outputted TAP files. If you can get anything going, please do get in touch.
With thanks to Csaba Virag, Zsolt Tarczali and Level Up Games (Canterbury) for their help with seeing these items preserved.
Our next entry into the archive is one where very little is known, but today that is about to change at Games That Weren’t with The Last Job. Not only with details about the game, but an exclusive preview build that you can now download and check out for yourself.
As time has gone on since the start of the games industry, the size of the games being produced have meant sadly much larger casualties with a larger impact. Games which have had a year or more spent on them with often tens to hundreds of people putting their life and soul into it – just to be discarded. This sadly would be the case with The Last Job. Continue reading →
This may come as something of a shock, but there was a BBC Micro edition of the classic Commodore 64 title Cyberdyne Warrior in development at the same time as that development by the Rowlands brothers.
After working on Scorpius, their next title took the decision to go with a flick screen approach, rather than use scrolling. This was mainly due to the fact that the game was being developed on both platforms, and the BBC Micro didn’t naturally scroll well. Had the Commodore 64 version been the only development, it may well have scrolled! Continue reading →
A very short entry for now on a Master System conversion of Rise of the Robots that never was – or was it? The game itself is famous for looking amazing, but not playing particularly great.
When you boiled down the graphics onto 8-bit platforms, then you were really in trouble. However, developer Clive Townsend would give it his best shot, but he was really up against it with a poor design to implement.
Palette fixed version of the GG options screen in Master System mode, thanks to Clive Townsend!
Not only was Clive working on the Game Gear edition, but simultaneously he would be developing the game for the Master System too. The only real differences were with the palettes and the screen layouts to adjust for the different size screens. Continue reading →
Well, after a bit of a break there was quite some backlog to clear. Thank you for all the submissions and also kind words about my Dad. This month we have a slightly larger GTW64 update with the following below – which includes many Novotrade concept titles:
A short post to highlight an early Apprentice (Rainbow Arts) screen that was shown in ACE magazine issue 27 on page 110.
Here you can see a screenshot with a different dashboard, without text and as Anonymous Contributor suggests, perhaps an early attempt to get away from localization issues.
Let us know if you find any other early screens for the game and we’ll add them here.
With thanks to Anonymous Contributor for the suggestion and Stephen Stuttard for the high-res scan.
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.
