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

Frog Dude (Megadrive) and Alfred Chicken (Amiga) prototypes released

GTW recently had an email from Andy Swann, who was one of the key programmers at Twilight back in the early 90’s, and one of the lead developers of the cool Alfred Chicken on the Amiga.

Andy has been attempting to find his old disks, and at Christmas found three disks. One blank, one with an early demo version of Alfred Chicken (Amiga) and another (and exciting!) early demo of an aborted title called Frog Dude on the Sega Megadrive.

Firstly, Alfred Chicken’s demo is believed to be a ECTS demo with some differences from the final game (including a different picture of Alfred Chicken, different game palette and no sound effects). A nice curiosity!

alfred

Frog Dude is a title which we don’t believe has been heard about before. It was prototyped around the same time as Alfred Chicken, but wasn’t quite as strong a title – hence development was stopped before it could be touted to any publishers. Andy was the lead developer, whilst Peter Tattersall was on graphics. Andy’s agent, John Cook, had come in and said that the Frog Dude title was “workman-like” and suggested they didn’t bother with finishing it. Andy then went on to port Alfred Chicken to the Gameboy instead.

FrogDude

As you can see from the various screenshots, the game takes some visual cues from Super Mario World, as the guys at the time were very taken by the game. The game allows you to swap between a mace wielding prince and a frog with a large tongue. There are some nice cartoony graphics, including a small animated sequence at the start – but no sound in place.

FrogDude2

Thanks very much to Andy, he has allowed us to share both the Alfred Chicken demo and Frog Dude with you all. So feel free to download and run in your favorite emulator and take a look in particular at what could have been a British take on Super Mario World!

FrogDude3

Downloads

Posted in: Amiga, Mega Drive, Prototype, Reviews | Tagged: | 2 Comments

New Games That Weren’t C64 updates

Keeping up the trend, some more new entries and various updates have been added.

This includes news of another Psygnosis conversion that never was, an interesting Club Light game, a selection of John Vanderaart entries, some newly recovered Duncan Kershaw games, confirmation that a cartridge version of Spy Who Loved Me did exist, David Doll speaks to GTW64 about the Virus April fools and much more. Enjoy!

8 new entries added

Anarchy, Aurum, Club Light adventure, Duncan Kershaw games, Gravity, Playboy – The Game, Smakeloos, The Spy Who Loved Me C64GS,

8 updates added

Castle Boy, Crossbow (William Tell), Here and there with the Mr Men, Space Hop, Starburst, Stratagos, Toki V1, Virus

Posted in: Commodore 64, GTW64 news | Leave a comment

Putty Squad (Amiga) released!

A huge surprise for Amiga fans today, as System 3 have released the Amiga version of Putty Squad after being missing for almost 20 years and to mark the release of the Playstation release.

4395_screen13

The game has been preserved thanks to the efforts of Galahad/Fairlight who helped master the game for release with John Twiddy and Phil Thornton.

I have to say, many of us were skeptical to whether the game would ever be released – but credit to System 3 for a very kind gift to the Amiga community just before the end of the year. Could Fuzzball (C64) be next? ;-)

For more details and download:

http://www.system3.com/promotional-download/puttysquadamiga/

Posted in: Amiga, News | 1 Comment

GTW64 xmas update 2013

It is that time of the year again, and another bumper update which has been building up. The big difference this year was the lack of a backlog, so all the materials here have been the result of further digging and disk preservations. We hope you enjoy it all, and there will be more in 2014 for sure! Merry Christmas!

3 previously unseen full games recovered

Thanks to Cory Kin and the loan of his work disks, we have found a number of full games which are previously unseen

Flok, Jet Combat, Master Blast

CDU Games Disk 6 recovered (Including 3 unseen games)

Thanks to Richard Smedley, CDU Games Disk 6 has been fully recovered and preserved – preserving 3 more previously unseen full games: Outbreak, Mirror Image and Mystery Man

CDU Games Disks

12 previously unseen previews recovered

Mostly thanks to Cory Kin’s work disk loan, a large amount of previously lost game previews (a lot of Cory’s own work) have been salvaged and preserved:

IndeflataBall, Erik, Earth Mover, Assault Force, Make My Day, Navadon, Pet Rescue, Questor 3, Unknown cute game, Unknown game, Unknown platformer, Unknown shooter

Spore 2 found?

It’s been in the digital archives for a while, but has remains of Spore 2 been under our noses all this time? Or at least an earlier build. Take a look at Cybowormz and then compare to Mutant Zone.

Cybowormz

Odd Melbourne House title surfaces in loading screen form

A loading screen by Lizard has been recovered showing a game called Questerious – we find that it was a Melbourne House title. Was it a precursor for Thone of Fire?

Questerious

Tangent and RISK prototypes found and added

Two early editions of two Edge games have been recovered and added to two separate prototype post entries here:

R.I.S.K prototypes, Tangent prototype

31 other new entries added

Altarius, Arc Angel, Atlaxmax, B-Ball, Bad Game, Ballfever, Ballisation, Cheeky Twins III, City Invaders, Danger! High Voltage, Death Blow, Dionysus III, Doomed World, Game Got No Name, Horror Drive, Hyper Galactic Warrior, Impulse, International Karate V1, Knight “‘n’ Grail 2, Omega Ceti, Rampage V1, Repton, Rim Raiders, Sir Lancelot, Space Ace, Starswarm, Temple of Medom, Trazers, Uridibad, Xiphoid, Jet Pac (Unofficial)

Also 10 additional updates added

Some more additions and tweaks. Check out the updates link for each to see what has changed. Nexus V1 has been added, but a Beyond Software labelled edition.

Basket Master V1, Deep Star, Escape, Firebird, Imperium, Lost Robot 2, Mindsmear, Movie Monster, The, Nexus V1, Star of Africa

Frank Gasking work disk collection added

A digitisation project which has been in progress for several years on and off now. The webmaster of GTW64 has compiled together all their work disks, tapes and gone through the lot – compiling together anything unfinished, incomplete pictures, games, demos into individual folders. More details on the page here with download links:

Frank Gasking work disks

Posted in: Commodore 64, GTW64 news, News | 2 Comments

Frank Gasking collection

Over the past few years, I have been busy porting my own C64 disks (mostly to pass on potentially lost game cracks and demos from my own collection) and work tapes with the aim of digitally archiving all of the work i’ve ever done on the C64.

There has always been a lot of odds and ends that I’ve had sitting around, and before everything fully deteriorated, I thought it was time to get everything ported over and tidied up.

Continue reading

Posted in: Commodore 64, Features, GTW64 news, Prototype, Unused materials | Tagged: | 1 Comment

Slightly Magic kickstarter

Author of the Codemasters graphic adventure Slightly Magic, Colin Jones, has set up a new Kickstarter project to resurrect the game in a 8-bit legacy edition (with faithfulness to the original graphics), but also with an extra special incentive which will be of interest to those into unreleased games like us….

As you will know via GTW64, there was a sequel planned called Slightly Spooky – which sadly never saw the light of day. Well, if Colin’s Kickstarter is successful and OUYA funding is obtained as well, then Slightly Spooky will also be produced and given free as digital copy to those who are eligible for Slightly Magic’s remake.

But that isn’t all! If the stretch goal of £12,000 is met, then the third title in the series will be produced also. A title was set originally for a 3rd game, but never started after the non-release of Slightly Spooky.

An additional bonus is that Allister Brimble will be re-recording his original music score with his latest instruments and equipment for the game.

For more details, check out the Kickstarter page here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/colinjones/slightly-magic-8bit-legacy-edition

Posted in: GTW64 news, News | 1 Comment