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 online since 1999, and long before that offline.
Please Browse our archive and discover the many entries that we host for many different platforms.
Due originally for release in Q4 of 2005, this was to be a sequel to Republic: The Revolution. “Blue Vault” the working title of the game. The development would consist of an 18-strong development team, and had been under way for around 6 months at the time of PC Zone magazine showing off the game in May 2004. Continue reading →
Graphic artist Craig Stitt has recently been putting up a lot of brilliant unseen materials from his SEGA days, and has today just added a video showing screens from another Sonic related title called “Treasure Tails”, featuring Tails as the main protagonist:
Unfortunately Craig doesn’t recall much about it. Just how far it got, we’re not sure – but it would be wonderful if something playable could be found of this isometric puzzle title. However, the screens shown are confirmed by Craig to be mock ups, so they probably never progressed any further. Continue reading →
A short entry for now on what sadly was to be an abandoned conversion of Star Control III for both the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation platforms. The game was eventually released on the PC and Mac. There is a pretty decent article about the game at http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/star-control-3/
There was some brief press at the time talking about the conversions, and here are some scans for now from Sega Pro magazine (August 1996) that talk about the conversion to the Saturn (thanks to Ross Sillifant). Continue reading →
We had a request from contributor Robin Gravel, who has spent some years looking for this Mastertronic/Virgin game that was advertised for PC back in 1988 called Ray Trace VS the Megadeath Aliens.
It was described as an arcade action game in a town with a different attitude. Proclaimed to be the first ever game to display 16 colours with CGA.
Was it ever released? Nothing has yet surfaced of the game, so we have no idea at this stage. Please get in touch if you know anything more or even have a copy!
Platform: Sony PlayStation and SEGA Saturn (unreleased)
A short entry to share some screens showing a much earlier version of Alien Resurrection, featuring a 3rd person perspective for the game that was eventually dropped for a 1st person viewpoint in the end.
A short post to share various screens from the pretty much complete but unreleased Universal Monsters that was due for release on the Amiga and Atari ST platforms. Sadly hitting development and design issues which would ultimately see it cancelled.
A quick post after receiving an email today from a Robin Gravel who has highlighted the classic title “The Heist” – a title I remember well on the Commodore 64.
In the advert which you can see here, the game is additionally advertised for the Atari and IBM PC + jr platforms. However, neither of those versions seem to be out there at all.
So the question is, were these two ever released at all? Or did they just sneak out in limited numbers? Let us know if you know anything more and thanks to Robin for flagging this one up.
Commando War was to be a very ambitious title from Titus Software back in 1990, a sort of cross between Populous and Cannon Fodder. But what was particularly ambitious was that the game was introduction of a concept called Action Concept. More on that in a bit.
This particular game would allow you to play a squad leader in control of up to 10 commandos, or you and a friend could control 5 each on the same side. There would be a series of missions that you could take part in across different maps, in a flip-screen style mode (at least that is what the Zero article suggests – no scrolling).Continue reading →
Just a quick post to share some odd Ocean related C64 assets I found as I was tidying through some archived disks from Dawn Hollywood (Nee Drake) and Paul Hughes when backing up some old CDs:
These “Time Out” and “Game Over” screens I don’t recognise from anywhere and they were on an unlabelled disk, recovered as deleted files. Not fully sure what format they are, so its possible they may have colour data not showing.
UPDATE: Contributor Hank (see comments) has confirmed that the screens are from Pang! Added how it should look to the above gallery. Mystery solved, though they are slightly different overall, so earlier screens or possibly even from another build.
Then on one of Dawn’s disks is an unfinished/unused loading screen for Vindicators, which attempts to do some hires colouring. In the end it was kept to just a monochrome screen for the final release.
A set of curiosities which we hope you find interesting. Hopefully we’ll find out soon what the Timeout and Game Over graphics were intended for.
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