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.
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.
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 →
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.
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.
I’ve seen some amazing developments over the years for the Vic 20 – a proper decent conversion of Manic Miner, isometric games in the style of the classic Ultimate titles and now a conversion of the classic C64 Super Mario Bros. rip off The Great Giana Sisters.
This was no official development being created back in the day at Rainbow Arts, but an unofficial conversion by TRSI64 back in 2010. Unfortuntaely this impressive looking conversion only seems to have got as far as scrolling most of the level data – with no main character or enemies implemented. Music is also missing – but what we have is something that looks very close to the C64 classic.
It is seriously impressive, even at this very early stage – and it would have been interesting to see the sprites implemented and how they would have come out. Possibly the SID music could have maybe been emulated through Aleksi Eeben’s impressive Sid Vicious player.
Things have clearly stalled with development, which is a huge shame. Hopefully we’ll get to hear from TRSI64 to learn more about the development and if it got any further than what we can see here. Maybe some day they may return to finish it off.
With thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni for the heads up.
Our next entry is a slightly obscure fighting game that was due for release on the Amiga 1200 and CD32. The game was set to be published by Team 17.
Oddly, the game wasn’t really covered much by magazines of the time. Only Amiga Dreams/Amiga Concept would do a short write up on the title. It could be possibly because the title isn’t correct. The main header on one part saying CHOKIGESSEN and the main text and quotes saying CHOKEGISEN. Neither produced any further results online.
Adrian has set up a wonderfully detailed area on the game, complete with interviews, design details about the game and what happened to it. A huge added bonus was that Adrian was kindly provided a demo to take screenshots from the PC edition, which have not been seen digitally online until now.
Combat Remix was a late Amiga fighting game that was due for release back in 1998 from a group called Low Level, highlighted to GTW thanks to regular Grzegorz Antosiewicz.
This is a short entry for now, as very little is actually known about the game and what happened to it. The only trace found so far seems to be from an old web archived site called Amiga Nutta, where there were 3 screenshots shown, as well as a few brief news snippets in Amiga Informer, Amiga Fever and The Games Machine Italia.
The game was looking pretty decent, and had obviously a lot of influence from Street Fighter for the character in yellow – and Grzegorz also suggests Piccolo from Dragon Ball for the second character. The backgrounds quite possibly were borrowed from other various games too – which suggests that it was indeed a combat “remix” in many ways, and maybe that was the intention.
How is it May already? A slightly smaller update this month with just 3 new entries, but there are 32 updates to various titles in the archive. Mostly tidy ups of old pages, but also some new information too for some of them and some new scans.
I’ve been completely blown away by the support when The Games That Weren’t book was launched late last year, and even more so when it completely sold out by the start of the new year.
It’s with thanks to the wonderful yolkfolk.com website and their eagle eyes that we learn of yet another Dizzy game that never was. This was no arcade or arcade adventure game this time though, with Codemasters deciding to branch into the realms of educational software.
Dizzy was clearly a very popular title with young aged gamers at the time, and Codemasters must have felt a great opportunity to push into the educational sector with their appealing character.
To be released for the Amiga, ST and PC, the game would encourage 3-6yr olds to explore rooms in Dizzy’s house, Daisy’s house and the park. Each location would be full of different objects which, when activated would display their name, make a sound or become animated. Children may be asked to find a particular object too. Continue reading →
Our next title in the archive was a MMO title that was actually experienced and played by PC owners in closed and open beta releases between 2009 and 2010, but then was shut down completely and disappeared from sight.
Huxley was an ambitious title built in the Unreal 3 engine and was intended for release on both PC and Xbox 360 at the time. The 360 edition was to follow the PC edition after around 6 months, though this later was changed to being put on hold, pending PC sales. 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.
