Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
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 since 1999.
Please Browse our archive and discover the many entries that we host for many different platforms.
Survivor Run is an original game that Creative Software were due to release back in 1983 – an original creation by Steven Yaeger that he had sold to the company.
The aim of the game was to travel down several screens to beam up a survivor trapped at the bottom of a crater on a remote planet. To do so, you would have to carefully burn through the floor using your thrusters, or use one of your limited bombs. Continue reading
Gamebase64 has been a hugely important digital archive for the Commodore 64 for over 25 years now, bringing together all of the games that have made the platform so special.
Webmaster and developer Steven Feurer tragically passed away suddenly in July 2023 which has hit the team incredibly hard. Steve was a great friend to all the team and was the glue that kept everything together and running for so long. Without Steve, there is no web presence – which is important to promote the site and encourage submissions/corrections.
Leaving the team without a web developer and maintainer has now put the project at huge risk of losing its online presence. Michael Plate (Database project leader, creator and maintainer of the collection) has put out a plea via the Lemon64 forums for any help to keep this great project going.
I wish personally that I could step in to help, but we have too much going on at the moment with preservation work and Games That Weren’t.
If you feel you might be able to help, or know someone who could, please do get in touch via the forum at: https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=83094 and help save this amazing digital archive.
Our next entry is nothing to do with the Elite licence that came later on the Commodore 64, though that too had an unreleased version of some kind that you can read about here. No, this is an entry which covers two cancelled editions of the game that were being done for the Atari 2600 and ColecoVision, and released under a 20th Century Fox label.
At the time, Sirius were working on a new game called Squish ‘Em on the Atari 2600, when Fox Video Games made a deal with them to take a number of their games and tie in various TV shows or just release in their original form. Squish ‘Em was to become The Fall Guy, on the Atari 2600 at least. Continue reading
A short collective entry for a series of Atari 400/800 adventures that are currently missing and were advertised for a long period of time in Computer Shopper magazine in 1986. Flagged up by Bertrand / Atari Frog.
These were three all new adventure-survival games with a twist and were called:
The twist was that if you made it to the end, you will find a secret number – which you could send to O.F.A and they will issue a verified survival certificate. Did anyone order them and can you help us preserve the titles.
Commodore 64 editions are also missing, which we are separately posted about.
With thanks to Bertrand / Atari Frog for highlighting and archive.org for the scan.
A bonus post to finish the week. Recently Fabrizio Bartoloni flagged up someone called BloodyCactus looking at an unreleased C64 adventure game called The Mermaid and the Crown.
Whilst looking into details to try and add entries onto the site, via the CASA Solution Archive we found that there were about 5 other adventure titles by Mountain Valley Software that were also never completed and released.
So, here are entries for all six of the titles overall, in case you hadn’t seen them before:
With thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni, BloodyCactus and CASA Solution Archive.
As the archive continues to grow, so does the sadness to see that there have been so many games started and never finished over the decades of the games industry. Here is yet another tragic loss, with this neat action game that was due back in 1993 for the Commodore Amiga.
Fatal Mission was an ambitious title that was being created by Ola Zandelin and Robert Hennings, where they wanted to create a new cinematic style adventure that would take cues from the classic Another World. Continue reading
Our friends at Atarimania.com have been busy yet again, with preservation of a prototype of Caverns of Mars.
This was dumped for the site by John Hardie, and is different from the final release. Not sure how much is different exactly, but here it is if you want to take a look:
http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-caverns-of-mars_41702.html
Thrust was a brilliant budget title from the mind of the late Jeremy Smith back in 1986, developed first for the BBC Micro (released via Superior Software), then converted to a large number of platforms by Firebird Software to great acclaim from all magazines.
Oddly (as a side note), according to Richard Hewison who worked at TelecomSoft, the Firebird C64 version got released before the BBC version by a matter of months. Although it looked very simple, the game was an extremely playable gravity-based title, and still holds up very well today!
The game even later saw an unofficial conversion to the Atari 2600 in later years. However, PC users were lacking a conversion for their platform … or were they? Continue reading
A short entry for now on a currently missing PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 title called Riftwar Saga, which was a 1/2-player hack and slash title that was due for release in 1992 from a company called Kid’s Source.
The game was an action adventure title which was set in a fantasy world of Midkemia (the fantasy world of Raymond E. Feist, a very well known fantasy author – thanks Alex and Dane!), and EGM magazine’s brief preview of the game promised non-stop action combined with a strong storyline and creative problem solving.
Overall the game would consist of around nine levels in total, with bosses at the end of each level to defeat. Sadly, the game disappeared without a trace and would become a game of mystery to many, including ParanoiaDragon, who first highlighted the title to us via Twitter.
Later in 1993, Betrayal at Krondor was released on the PC, an RPG title which shows that the brand was clearly trying its best to get into the computer game realm at the time.
Kontakt was a new adventure game being written for the Commodore Amiga sometime in 1999, where you would control a reporter called Albert Faser, who suspects someone of carrying out illegal transactions.
When given a tip-off, he leaves the editor of his newspaper (also a trusted colleague) with a floppy disk containing a message about his intentions. When he gets caught, he wakes up on a hard and uncomfortable bed. In a room with no doors, windows or other openings – you now have to figure out what to do next. 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.
