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.
As part of the launch and release of The Games That Weren’t book, we are adding assets and content that didn’t make it to print as bonus content to share with you.
Within the book is a detailed 8 page full story about the unreleased Conquest by Vid Kidz. We speak to developer Larry DeMar about the development, with additional input from Eugene Evans and Sinistar developer Sam Dicker and help from Jeff Vavasour (who took screenshots from the compiled sources). Continue reading →
As part of the launch and release of The Games That Weren’t book, we are adding assets and content that didn’t make it to print as bonus content to share with you.
Within the book is a detailed 10 page full story about the unreleased Dark Tower for the Vectrex. We speak to developer John Hall about the development and what happened, with contributions from senior electronic project engineer Gary Bergmann, Robert Hoffberg, Helmut Müller, Chris Romero, Jim Francis, Mark Indictor, Paul Allen Newell, Sean Kelly and Thomas McDonald. Continue reading →
Platform: Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, PC Engine and Sega Mega Drive
A short entry for an interesting platformer which was originally called Dr Mallet and the Tribbles – thanks to Karl Kuras for the heads up about the game.
An intriguing football title which was one of the most ambitious football gaming projects of its time. Kicked off originally by UK based developer Crush in 1995, originally under the name of “Live Soccer” / “Live! Sports” and in collaboration with Japan’s SunSoft.
The game would combine arcade, management and online functionality all within one package. It was tested out in Spain with great success and everything seemed to be going well with the development overall, even though there was a lot of work still to go.
As part of the launch and release of The Games That Weren’t book, we are adding assets and content that didn’t make it to print as bonus content to share with you.
Within the book is a detailed 10 page full story about the unreleased Vindicators for the Atari Lynx by Atari Games. We speak to developer David Kurensky about the development and the troubles that occurred, which led up to the cancellation.
Part of level captured from early prototype from MacRorie video.
A short post on a cancelled Dreamcast adventure game that was in development by Quantic Dream back in 2000, following on from their Omikron development. Below is a magazine article and several screenshots from the game. Thanks to Karl Kuras for the heads up and to Ross Sillifant for the extra scans.
As part of the launch and release of The Games That Weren’t book, we are adding assets and content that didn’t make it to print as bonus content to share with you.
It was intended to cover at least one Atari Lynx title in detail, and at one point it was looking like Strider 2 (which itself was originally to be a game called TOR) was going to be that title. However, there wasn’t enough detail to warrant doing a full piece on the game from our initial investigations. Here is what we managed to find out though (including the revelation that it was going to be converted to the unreleased Atari Panther console too), with magazine information provided thanks to Ross Sillifant. Continue reading →
Thanks to Ken Knight for bringing it to our attention that the long lost Mega Drive conversion of Mad Stalker: Full Metal Forth has recently been released by independent publisher Columbus Circle, some 26 years after it was intended originally.
The game is a side scrolling beat’em up set over 6 levels and is set in the year 2142, where you take the control of the manned slave gear “Hound Dog”, protecting the city of Artemis and ultimately defeating other slave gears of the enemy. Here you can see the game in action:
As part of the launch and release of The Games That Weren’t book, we are adding additional assets and content that didn’t make it to print as bonus content to share with you.
Within the book is a detailed 10 page full story about the unreleased Starring Charlie Chaplin for both the Atari ST and Commodore 64 platforms by U.S Gold. The book also includes a specially re-pixelled Atari ST screenshot from a grainy magazine scan.
A gameplay mockup screenshot from the Atari ST version.
Produced by Canvas Software in 1987, this was one of the hardest write ups to research, due to a number of key people no longer with us today. We however talk to as many people as we can to piece together what happened to both conversions – including Donald Campbell, Danielle Woodyatt, Dawn Hollywood (nee Drake), Jon Grimshaw, Paul Clansey, Richard Tidsall, Sean Townsend, Stephen Ward and Simon Butler. Giving as complete a picture of what happened exactly as we possibly can. Continue reading →
As part of the launch and release of The Games That Weren’t book, we are adding assets and content that didn’t make it to print as bonus content to share with you.
Within the book is a detailed 10 page full story about the unreleased Rolling Thunder for the Atari Lynx by Atari Games. We speak to developer Chuck Ernst, Joel Seider and artist Robb Mariani about the development and the troubles that occurred over two separate iterations. The book also includes a specially re-pixelled Lynx screenshots from grainy magazine scans.
Tidied up sprite sheet from Robb Mariani
Here we present a sprite sheet provided from artist Robb that he managed to save. There are also a number of magazine scans, showing some grainy screenshots, and also the adverts where Atari naughtily used NES screenshots to depict Lynx screenshots – which have for years been wrongly attributed as a result.
At the time of writing, Chuck was not able to recover the source code for the final build, but an early prototype has just surfaced in September 2020 from a YouTuber called MacRorie (thanks to Ross Sillifant for the heads up), who has recently acquired a number of prototype ROMs. https://youtu.be/NS1O8KWBARw?t=1310
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.
