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

That was the Mega-CD Game That Wasnt

Posted: , last updated: by Alex Ross-Shaw

Its time to finally lay the rumor to bed. There wasn’t a Mega CD version of the classic game, Cannon Fodder.

The rumors have existed since the days of the Megadrive and have never really be confirmed or denied one way or another. Some people claim to have seen adverts for it and its always been hoped one day something would leak out into the internet to prove its existence.

Sadly, it is not to be.

In the pursuit of my investigations about this GTW I managed to contact Jon Hare of Sensible Software fame, who kindly replied saying he knew nothing about a planned Mega CD version of Cannon Fodder.

According to Games That Werent’s very own Frank Gasking, Jon was often involved in the conversions of a game by Sensible Software onto other platforms, either overseeing them or coding them himself.

Taking that into account then, it makes it highly unlikely that Cannon Fodder ever existed in some form for the Mega CD. Its still possible it was mooted at some point, perhaps even announced on an advertisement for the game on other platforms. It wouldn’t be the first time a game was advertised as coming soon before it had even been started.

But unless Jon’s memory has tricked him (or he wasn’t involved in early discussions) it looks like Cannon Fodder for the Mega-CD is a ghost that can finally be put to rest.

Posted in: Mega CD, Reviews | Tagged: , , | 4 Comments

Two Games That Werent (and sadly never will be)

Posted: , last updated: by Alex Ross-Shaw

Sadly not all Games That Werent investigations turn out successfully, and many times we find out about an unreleased or cancelled game only to find out that whatever work was done on it is also lost to the ether.

I found out about two such games over the weekend.

The first was a planned Megadrive version of Aliens vs Predator for the SNES. The game plays like an AvP version of Final Fight and got mixed reviews at the time. A different version was to be released in the arcades a year later by Capcom but the console version on the SNES was released by Activision who owned the AvP licence at the time. I was intrigued to see if I could track down any evidence of the port given how much of a fan I am of both the AvP franchise and Final Fight.

The SNES version of Alien vs Predator

I managed to contact the producer of the SNES game, Tom Sloane, who confirmed its existence and directed me to the company who were in charge of creating the Megadrive version, Realtime Associates Inc.

Although a Megadrive version of Aliens vs. Predator was indeed planned, along with a PC version, it was scrapped as Activision werent happy with how it was developing. I suspect that if reviews of the SNES version were mixed, then poor sales would have also hampered any willingness to release the game on other platforms.

Sadly nothing exists of these planned versions so while its nice to confirm that a version was planned and it is a genuine GTW, its a shame nothing exists of it today.

The second game I found purely by accident while looking for information on Aliens vs. Predator, as Realtime Associations Incs president, David Warhol revealed to me they were was a planned video game conversion of a comic called Youngblood, which came out in the early 1990s.

Youngblood was a comic in the early 1990s

The game was planned for the PS1, Sega Saturn and the PC and Warhol (David, not Andy) described it as an action based real-time strategy game.

Like Aliens vs Predator though, nothing remains of this game despite it being more recent (well at least within the last 20 years!).

Its always a shame to discover that certain games were in fact planned for release, only to simultaneously discover that nothing remains of them now but at least we can document their planned existence in the hope that something turns up one day.

Special thanks belong to Tom Sloane of Sloaperama Productions and David Warhol of Realtime Associates Inc for sharing their thoughts and memories on these games, but please do remember to archive everything from now on!

Posted in: Mega Drive, PC, Reviews, Saturn, SNES | Tagged: , , | 8 Comments

‘St. Pauli’ C64 game recovered

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

Thanks to Enthusi/Onslaught in the C64 scene, the long lost St. Pauli adventure game has been found and recovered. This is a German based adventure game written in GAC which was released in very limited numbers.

A shot from the game start.

It has been known about, but missing for many years and on the wanted lists of GTW64 and Gamebase for sometime. As it has had a proper commercial release, no entry is needed, but here is the GB64 for you to check out! (See the readme file for more details).

http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=7289&d=45&h=0

In December 2021, contributor Alex got in touch via the comments to say that the readme is incorrect, and the game has three different storylines in total. Here is what Alex had to say:

“At the beginning of the game it is determined at random which one you are playing. Part 2 is actually 3 totally independent games in one. The story you solved in part 1 determines which of the 3 pair of codes you should use to start part 2.”

The solution can be found with more information at https://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C6084/St.+Pauli.html

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

Blitz

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

2000 Cyber Systems

Platform: Game Boy Color

Blitz was a simple Colour Game Boy budget effort being developed by Jamie Solomons (code) and with myself (Frank Gasking) doing graphics back in 2000 for Thalamus Interactive. This was opportunity for me to get work published properly on an 8-bit platform, being just a little too young to get something released for the Commodore 64 (which was the original dream!).

Level 3’s map

Jon Wells was one of the developers already at Thalamus who helped Jamie and I to try and break into the industry, and suggested doing a conversion of his Blitz 2000 title from the Commodore 64. This suggestion was taken on board under the development team named “Cyber Systems” which was my label for Public Domain games on the Commodore 64. Jamie Solomons was a recent addition to the team to handle the coding side of things, who was already doing a lot of Assembly Language programming on the Amiga at the time. Continue reading →

Posted in: Game Boy Color, Reviews | Tagged: , | 4 Comments

Colour Gameboy dev assets

Posted: , last updated: by Frank Gasking

A selection of random bits of graphic (Frank Gasking) and code work (Jamie Solomons) which was done in early 2000 when the Colour Gameboy was big and there was an opportunity to get developing for the machine.

These are just a sample, getting used to the tools before starting a varient of Jon Well’s Blitz 2000 game. The image of the man on a platform is from a test demo produced by Jamie Solomons, getting familiar with the Gameboy architecture.

Another space based background was later used as the basis of a level design for the Commodore 64 game – Sub Hunter.

Download CGB assets

Gallery


Posted in: Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Prototype | Tagged: | Leave a comment