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 since 1999.
Please Browse our archive and discover the many entries that we host for many different platforms.
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.
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 Havoc?
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 →
As part of our Christmas updates, we present a set of preservations of various titles for the Commodore VIC-20 and ZX Spectrum. Many of the VIC-20 titles have already been preserved, but there are quite a few bits and pieces not yet preserved until now.
Our next Christmas 2024 update for the archive (and covering the late Archer Maclean’s work) takes a look at the early beginnings of Jimmy White’s Whirlwind Snooker, before Jimmy had any ties at all to the game. This includes an early 1989 test using GWBasic for the 3D routines for the table.
There was an ST preview present which unfortunately had a code protection on it. Thanks to Galahad, this was very quickly cracked and you can find the unprotected and tidied up version below. If you want to know the code – it is AC and then from the numpad: 0 and 4. Continue reading →
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).
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!
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 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:
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:
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 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 →
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 →
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.
Backflip animations – possibly traced from the film Grease (Thanks Avram for the heads up!)
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 →
As you’ll be aware, the games industry is a turbulent one, where projects (and even companies) can often fail and result in cancellations. The team who would be assigned to working on Team SAS were described as amazing, and had not long just come off from completing the award-winning B-17 Flying Fortress – the Mighty 8th and were now about to embark on a new development called Team SAS.
Working with the team was SAS veteran Andy McNab, who donned a skinsuit and gave the game’s motion capture a realism that no normal actor could match. Level designer Stuart Maine revealed that the game also had a lot of animators and was very much animation driven.
Stuart and the team for instance had to plot spline routes through the levels for all four characters, which took a very long time to get right. The advantage is that it made the characters look incredibly realistic and could do animations that matched to the environment. Continue reading →
Platform: PC (the possibly others at a later date)
Not long after working on an unreleased Saturn version of Alien Odyssey (a story for another day), Argonaut’s Martin Piper was assigned to another project which was to showcase the new 3DFX Voodoo 1 graphics card (the first real mainstream graphics accelerator for the PC) and Argonaut’s BRender engine.
Cult was going to be an open world third person arcade shooter, with even talk of Virtual Reality integration at one point. There wasn’t really a story at this point, it was far too early – though Martin recalls a zombie twist of some kind.
Working with Martin on the game were artists Vanessa Pouillard and Owen Jenkins, who put together a few scenes, including an outside world area in a desert and a Diner with some underground parts as a proof of concept over a few months or so. Martin suggests that someone called Emerson was behind the design/concept. Continue reading →
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!
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.
