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 online since 1999, and long before that offline.
Please Browse our archive and discover the many entries that we host for many different platforms.
Released eventually in 2013 as The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, the game was a long and troubled development overall, having started way back in 2006.
GTW staff member Ross Sillifant dug out some screens from a GamesTM magazine article which shows a few screens during the transition phase over from XCOM to The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, where the game moved from a first person shooter to a more tactical-based game. Continue reading
Platoon was a superb movie tie-in game from Ocean Software back in 1988 with some excellent varied levels that captured the essence of the movie.
Thanks to contributor Martin Inter, here are some slightly earlier Commodore 64 screens which show some differences to the final game.
Firstly we have a very different and early score panel for the tunnel section in the game, followed by another level that shows “Stamina” and “Bullets” as text instead of “Morale” and “Ammo” like in the final game. Continue reading
Over the years we have figured out at GTW64 about the connection between Thundercats and the unreleased Wolf by Gargoyle Games – as well as Bombjack 2 and Beyond the Ice Palace originally intended to be two follow on Thundercats games, which you can read about here and here.
The released game however continues to reveal more mysteries thanks to Martin Inter, who has highlighted that adverts for the game and the main inlay itself show scenes from the game that were not in the final version.
Above for instance are two scenes from the C64 edition showing a level not seemingly present in the final game, and also Lion-O in a stance not present either. Continue reading
Another month, and another GTW64 update with a bunch of new entries, including some new downloads for you to check out that haven’t been previously preserved as far as we can tell. These are Ladders 2, Ex Simultan and Maerzi 2 (all thanks to Csaba Virag). Also finally the Anirog version of Rhyme Land has been added! Hope you enjoy the update, and see you all in March!
Enforce, Lifespan, Shoot Out, Top-Hole Golf, Ladders 2, Ex Simultan and Maerzi 2
Balla Balla, Charlie Chaplin, Heebie Jeebies, It’s Rory!, Joust, Knights of Legend Expansion Packs, Mattie Goes Mining, Ooops Up, Pulsator, Rockball, Rhyme Land, Spooky, The Magic Roundabout
What has always been fascinating is how Parasol Stars never seemingly saw a proper release in arcades, and was only released on consoles and home computer platforms (the story of the C64 edition is of course already well known).
According to contributor Daniel, the developers of the PC Engine version were contacted (source: https://unmamed.mameworld.info/non_taito.html#ParasolStars) and asked if the game was converted from an arcade machine that was never released. They confirmed that it was developed from scratch specifically for the console.
However, it was revealed that the game was location tested as an arcade cabinet in one or more sites in Japan. It was essentially a PC-Engine inside an arcade cabinet.
Reports at unmamed.mameworld suggest that around the time of the US launch of the PC-Engine/Turbografx system, there was a local arcade that had Victory Run and Galaga ’90 in a cabinet advertising the Turbografx-16 system – suggesting this could have been the plan for Parasol Stars’ release. Continue reading
Our next entry is a very early title that was flagged up to us by team member Karl Kuras, who spotted this interesting early Smash TV-looking title that was due for release from Strangeways.
It hadn’t been long at all since Ocean’s official Smash TV conversion, so it was potentially a ballsy move by Strangeways to try and do something similar. The game was also apparently based around a futuristic TV game show and followed almost the exact same style of story line. Continue reading
A quick post thanks to team member Grzegorz Antosiewicz, who has found a set of early Crazy Cars 3 screenshots in Generation 4 magazine from June 1991, which show a very different looking game overall to the one that was eventually released:
As you can see, the screenshots show different and bigger sprites for the cars, less detailed roads and a very early HUD.
Essentially a complete redesign occurred. It would be very interesting to see this early prototype in action and see just how much of a different direction the game was going in.
With thanks to Grzegorz Antosiewicz for highlighting and the scans provided.
We just wanted to post to say a huge thank you to contributor LiqMatrix who blew us away today by donating our entire hosting and domain costs for the year.
I had not put out a call for hosting donations for the past 3-4 years and had been covering myself. However, I’d forgot about leaving the donate button on the site and had the surprise yesterday.
So thank you very much to LiqMatrix for such a kind and generous donation and all your recent support with the site!
Following on from the recent PC DOS release of an unreleased conversion of Team 17’s Overdrive thanks to Damiano Gerli, GTW’s Grzegorz Antosiewicz dug out a series of early screens from the game. Overall showing many differences and features not present in the final game.
Here for instance you can see early previews where there are different track graphics that were not used in the final game:
Recently one of our contributors Jürgen Clausen kindly got in touch with the offer of sending over some German PC Shareware CD’s that were released in the early-mid 1990s, before they went into the trash.
These didn’t seem to be preserved anywhere, so here they are with inlay scans and ISO files uploaded to archive.org (first time uploading to the archive, so hopefully all is ok):
They both contain a collection of Windows 3.1 software, of which some many not yet be preserved. I haven’t had chance to go through due to a lack of time, but let us know if you find anything interesting.
A huge thank you to Jürgen Clausen for sending these over to GTW for preserving.
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.
