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.
More from GTW64, including a previously unseen platformer preview (in its early days) thanks to Joachim Wijnhoven. It is believed it could be the long lost Kid Saviour game by Roy Fielding… more on that soon! :)
Yet more for May with the following additions and updates, including a great contribution from Jan Schulze on Bamboo and new entry Hydrogenese (prompting this update tonight):
Michael Ware has very kindly recovered all the sources and demos for a early production of Biff that was cancelled. Interestingly it was also developed in 1989 for Zeit Productions – suggesting that Biff was originally meant to be for another company and not Beyond Belief!
Some years ago I was talking on the Lemon 64 of a strange recollection of a rather different looking version of the C64 Wonderboy. I had the budget edition of the game, which I played to death – but also later picked up the game on a Beau Jolly 30 pack of games. The recollection was of a rather expanded looking main sprite (where as the version I originally played had two sprites bolted together).
Retro Gamer issue 113 had once featured an excellent feature on the trilogy of Shadowfire by Martyn Carroll. Trilogy? Well, you’ll need to check out the article to find out more details about the 3rd game (as well as get an insight from the original developers).
Part of the feature included the uncovering of a concept document for Shadowfire 3, which was discovered by Dennis Gustafsson, whilst digging out some other materials for Martyn.
The document was given to Dennis by Ally Nobel whilst at Denton Designs between 1991 and 1995 time. Rage absorbed Denton by 1995, and sadly Shadowfire 3 was a casualty of this. The game was planned for development on the PC (and later PlayStation and Saturn)… the Amiga wasn’t thought to be in the plans due to it being a bit late in the day.
Thanks to Martyn and Dennis on their rescue attempts on digitally preserving the document, we are very happy to release the document (thanks also to Ally Nobel for giving us the go ahead). It’s a wonderful document, with some great concept sketches throughout. Take a look of what could have been in this incomplete trilogy!
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.