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.

Latest News and Posts

Lemmings 3D

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

1994 Psygnosis

Platform: Commodore Amiga 1200

A surprising entry for now thanks to Keith Gilliland for the heads up, after a post was recently made on Reddit about the Amiga being ahead of its time graphically.

From what seems to be an ex-Psygnosis/Clockwork Games developer (who wasn’t involved directly), there is mention of a version of Lemmings 3D running on the Amiga. However, it was cancelled as “the frame rate was so bad”.

When asked for more details, the developer suggests it was in early development and more of a tech demo.  There were the basic fundamentals with 3D blocks and Lemmings wandering around, but no proper levels or anything at that stage. 

The developer suggests they saw it running on a producer’s machine – an Amiga 2000, before it completely disappeared for good. There doesn’t seem to have been ever any announcement about an Amiga conversion at the time in the press unfortunately.

The likelihood of the prototype is probably slim, but we’re hopeful something could be recovered. Do you know anything more about this development?

With thanks to Keith Gilliland for the heads up and contribution.

Posted in: Amiga, Reviews | Tagged: | Leave a comment

My tribute to Jason Kelk

Posted: by Frank Gasking

Recently my good friend of 27 years, Jason Kelk, sadly lost his 15 month battle with COVID. It’s still sinking in that he’s no longer with us, so to try and help process things I wrote a blog post about my memories of meeting Jason and the time we spent over the years.

It’s been written freely and from the heart, so its quite a long piece, but hopefully gives an insight to what a good friend he was.

https://fgasking.wordpress.com/2021/06/27/my-memories-of-jason-kelk/

Posted in: GTW64 news, News | 8 Comments

GTW64 June 2021 update

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Still just about managing to sit at the computer long enough in the heat to produce another GTW64 update for a new month. This month we have a 30+ year long lost Kele Line game recovered, a 32 year old RPG preview recovered, details of an Artic game conversion never released and a big list of updates to pre-existing entries. Certainly check out the updates to Worron if you have missed the other news posts this month. Enjoy!

6 new entries added

A.E, Accilatem, Alladin’s Cave, Hungry Dead, Roadburner, The Mad Scientist

acc1

16 updates added

Aurum, Blood Bowl, Covermount casualties, Force Of Four, Future Bike Simulator V1, Ladders To Learning, Murder!, Mutant Zone, Mythos, Otherworld, Penguin Tower, Super Thief, Tiger Road 2, Time Crystal, Trooper, Worron

Posted in: GTW64 news | Leave a comment

Shao Lin’s Road C64 master disk

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

There are some nice surprises that turn up from time to time in the C64 scene, and one recent one has been the surfacing of the Tape / Disk masterer of Edge/Softek’s conversion of Shao Lin’s Road on the C64.

Thanks to Nawfal Firas who found the disk in their collection, it was passed onto archivist John Watson, who has produced a G64 image of the disk for posterity.

Below you can find a download of the image, plus scans of the disk itself and instructions on how to run and compile the master. It is very likely to be exactly what was mastered as the final game, and therefore no differences. However, this is an important preservation of what was used to create the final copies of the game that people loaded up. And as fellow preservationist Havar Bruvold Hojem perfectly summed it up – “A peak behind the curtain”.

Thank you to Nawfal Firas and John Watson for their fantastic work.

Download

Master_ShaoLinRoad

Scans

Posted in: Commodore 64, GTW64 news, Prototype | Tagged: | Leave a comment

The Killing Tool

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

1996 Dynabyte

Platform: Sony PlayStation

The Killing Tool was to be a cyberpunk platformer created by Dynabyte Software back in 1996 for the Sony PlayStation and possibly other platforms too.

zzzzz

Thanks to The Genesis Temple and gaming historian Damiano Gerli, we learn that Marco Caprelli and Paolo Costabel had started planning the game, and arranged for artists Alessandro “Talexi” Taini and Bjorn Giordano to create a portfolio/design pitch to send to Sony UK. The plan was to get in touch again after the summer to see if they were interested in the game. Continue reading →

Posted in: PlayStation, Reviews | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Son of Zeus

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

1992 Electronic Zoo

Platform: Commodore Amiga

Son of Zeus was set within the mythical era of the Greek gods, where an evil being has captured the gods within their lair and smashed the artefact that could save them into several pieces. Scattered around the kingdom, it is up to Zeus’ son Herakles to gather all the pieces.

son2

Shown throughout the press at the time, the striking thing about the game are the graphics, and just how huge they are, with what seems to be quite impressive animation. You must encounter Hydras, Gorgons and all kinds of other mythical creatures in your quest to save the gods. Continue reading →

Posted in: Amiga, Reviews | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Black Legend games

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

1993-1995 Black Legend

Platforms: Commodore Amiga and CD32

A short post for now to highlight a series of games that were due for release on the Amiga by Black Legend across a 2-3 year period.

The publisher behind titles such as Football Glory were covered in various magazines of the time, and were working on around 4 titles in total that were looking promising, but ultimately were never to make it to user’s screens. These titles were:

fear1Fear

On board a gigantic spaceship, the aim is simply to stay alive and navigate your way through a huge maze of corridors. In between the simple shooting action are a series of puzzles and tasks to open up further pathways into the ship. Sounds a bit like Obliterator by Psygnosis.

You start with a simple pistol and then upgrade to better weapons as you progress, but also have to deal with larger and more dangerous creatures. There are credits on the screenshot, which we can’t quite fully make out. Coder seems to be a “Geln Innsen” and artist is “Thomas Nobeng” – neither gives any results. Any ideas or anyone know of a better screenshot where we can determine the credits? Continue reading →

Posted in: Amiga, Reviews | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Chuck Rock 2 early assets

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Many of you will remember the original Chuck Rock and its brilliant rock band title screen from the early 90’s. Although the game itself was nothing massively special, it revokes a lot of fun and happy memories for many of us.

It was therefore no surprise when a sequel was announced by Core Design, this time with Chuck’s son as the main protagonist. The game was released in 1993 for a variety of platforms, including Commodore Amiga, SEGA Genesis, Mega CD, Game Gear and Master System.

Continue reading →

Posted in: Amiga, Unused materials | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

1989 Mindscape

Platforms: Atari ST and Commodore Amiga

Thanks to contributor Robin Gravel, we have learnt of yet another unreleased Star Trek game in the shape of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier by Mindscape in 1989. Released on the PC, the Amiga edition was shown on the back of the box, but was never to surface, along with a planned ST edition that were to appear later in early 1990.

amiga screen startrek

The game itself was a mixture of genres, including fighting scenes and 3D space combat sequences. The space sequences are all controlled via the bridge of the Enterprise, with a wide range of commands to give orders to your crew or various actions in the game. Continue reading →

Posted in: Amiga, Atari ST, Reviews | Tagged: | Leave a comment

New final release of Worron (C64)

Posted: by Frank Gasking

Happy Sunday everyone!

A lovely surprise today, where author of the unreleased Firebird game Worron, Richard Paynter got in touch to provide GTW with an upgraded and fixed version of his 34 year old game.

worron1 1

After GTW recovered Richard’s work in 2015, it was found that the game wasn’t quite finished in places and there were a number of issues which made it impossible to complete without cheats enabled. It was something that bothered Richard for a few years, so this year he decided to decompile and fix it all.

Not only has he fixed a lot of the collision and crash issues, but he’s added an introduction picture and a variety of music and sound effects to round off and polish up the game he created when he was just 17 years old.

Check out the full story here and grab a copy for yourself to check out – yet another new and complete C64 game for your enjoyment and a happy outcome for a game once lost.

Worron – Firebird

Posted in: Commodore 64, GTW64 news, News | Leave a comment