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

GTW64 April 2021 update

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Slightly late this time round, with an odd game that turned up which we thought was previously unseen (until the name was established from the end sequence :D ) and more unreleased Commodore 64 games posts for your enjoyment.

Operation Mindcrime Xertyn-X – early preview recovered

A bizarre finding for the GTW archives, found on a Hungarian disk collection by contributor Csaba Virag. The game is seems has been out there for some time in preview form (once the name was established). Check it out for yourselves below:

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Operation Mindcrime Xertyn-X

Then we have 9 new entries added

Bird Mother V1, Buffalo Roundup V1, Big Nose The Caveman, Covermount casualties, , Robocop 2 V1, Silverwolf, Splish Splash, Sword Of Aragon, System X

And finally – 20 updates added

A Chance In Hell, Beep Boy, Dungeons, Amethysts, Alchemists ‘n Everythin’, Gold Train, Gotcha Maths, Heavy Barrel, Ixion, King, Mysterious Worlds, New Zealand Story V1, Portal, Pubjumper Mario, Scramble 2010, Sorderon’s Shadow: The Legend of Elindor, The Bobby Yazz Show, Trojan, Ultrabulb, White Feather Cloak, Winning Streak, Zone Of Darkness

Posted in: GTW64 news | Leave a comment

Ghouls ‘N’ Ghosts (Amiga/ST) early differences

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Getting into a bit of a pattern at the moment of doing posts on differences between early previews and final releases of games on a Friday. I’ll see if I can keep it up! Today we take a look at a preview of Ghouls ‘N’ Ghosts that was previewed in French magazine TILT, showcasing screenshots of the Atari ST edition in particular.

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

Deep Scan

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

1982 SEGA Electronics

Platforms: Commodore Vic-20

Also known as: Sub-Scan

Released on the Atari 2600, SEGA Electronic’s Sub-Scan was also due for release on the Commodore Vic-20 (and other platforms to be confirmed).

It was being developed by the same author (Joe Sengir) who worked on another unreleased Vic 20 SEGA game called Tac-Scan. Compared to that game though, Deep Scan was fully complete.

It isn’t known why the game was never actually released to the world, but its believed to be due to SEGA leaving the Vic 20 market and moving over to the C64. It was confirmed by the developer that they no longer had anything of the game, so it could well be lost forever.

Do you know anything more about this conversion?

Posted in: Commodore VIC-20, Reviews | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Chintos Revenge

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

1992 Millennium

Platforms: Atari ST and Commodore Amiga

Our next entry is for an arcade action adventure game set in the East, where you must guide Chinto through a castle full of traps and evil guards to avenge his parents’ death.

Clipboard01 1

Spread across around 400 screens with a slanted top-down viewpoint, the game was to be a console-style martial arts game with Chinto avoiding traps, navigating mazes and engaging in combat galore with ninjas, guards and a large red dragon at one stage. The graphical style was very interesting overall, with characters that had small bodies and large heads.

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

Ixion

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

1983 SEGA

Platforms: Arcade, Atari 2600, Atari 8-bit and Commodore Vic 20 (Probably C64 too)

Ixion is an intriguing arcade title that was due for release from SEGA back in 1983, and was based on Zaxxon’s hardware, even though you may not think it looking at the game. The game was a top-down 2D grid based action title, where you must collect all the letters to spell out the word IXION, whilst shooting enemies and avoiding being shot yourself.

ixion
Arcade version of the game

According to Segaretro.org , it is suggested that Ixion likely failed its location test, considering that it was largely finished. Thankfully the game has been dumped and is actually fully playable in MAME.

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Posted in: Atari 2600 / Atari VCS, Atari 400/800/XL, Commodore 64 (C64), Commodore VIC-20, Reviews | Tagged: | Leave a comment

Blastar unused assets

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

1993 Core Design

Platform: Amiga

Grzegorz Antosiewicz has kindly provided a number of titles and scans showcasing assets that never quite made the final build, so here is another post looking at one of those titles. Blastar was a neat multi-directional shooter which got mixed reviews from the press at the time.Clipboard02

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

Blork

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

199? Scienide

Platform: Amiga 500

Blork was a very stylish underwater shooter being created by the demo group Scienide (http://www.scienide.de/) around the mid-late 90s, where you control a cute fish main character and his octopus friend within a very dark and gloomy underwater world. Development was by Ply2, with music by Exodus and graphics by Blork and Nytech.

Blork 006

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Posted in: Commodore Amiga, Reviews | Tagged: | 2 Comments

A treasure trove of PlayStation prototypes

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

We are blessed to have a number of various preservation projects dedicated to unreleased/prototype games, especially with the vast number of platforms out there to try and preserve for. The Hidden Palace have for many years been preserving various prototypes and unreleased games across 16-bit (and onwards) platforms and this weekend they have announced one of their biggest endeavours yet.

300px Project Deluge Logo

Over 700 PlayStation 2 prototypes have been archived for you to check out, and there is much more to come too. Keep checking out for news and updates over at https://hiddenpalace.org/News/Project_Deluge:_PlayStation_2

Posted in: News, Sony, Sony PlayStation, Sony PlayStation 2 | Leave a comment

Cardiaxx unused assets

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Occasionally we take a break from covering games that were never released, but also look at titles that were released, but had some distinctive differences at one stage or another.

Today we’re covering Cardiaxx, which was released by Electronic Zoo in 1991 and then later by Team 17 in 1993. Thanks to Grzegorz Antosiewicz, here are some highlighted features shown in the press at the time that never made it to the final game:

In early previews from magazines such as K issue 54, Generation4 1991 September, Power Play 1991 12, TGM issue 12 – Grzegorz highlights that you can see unused bosses and power ups pods for your ship.

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

Alive

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

2000 Darkage Software

Platform: Amiga AGA

Whilst many had long abandoned the Amiga as a platform, there were those who were still trying to keep the dream alive, and one such team was the Italian based Darkage Software who were producing a number of games back in 2000.

alive 640 1

As well as the impressive 3D title Tales of Heaven, they were also working on a game called Alive, which was a sort of a Super Stardust clone, but with many more objects on screen and moving a lot faster overall…. A sort of bullet-hell version it seems! It was featured briefly in the press of the time and looked pretty decent overall, as you can see from the screenshots in the gallery.

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