Preserving Cancelled & Unreleased Video Game History Since 1999
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.
Thanks to Encore (Nothing to do with Elite I might add), a contributor on Lemon 64 – a range of unused sprites have been found tucked away in the game.
Ever wondered why so much was missed out of the conversion, well it seems the likes of the break dancing skaters were meant to have been…
Maybe they just ran out of space?… or just time whilst developing. This suggests that there could actually be some character based assets hidden away too, so if we find anything we’ll report it back here.
Copied and pasted directly from the post on the Retro Gamer forum, but pretty much says it all:
Six previously unreleased Atari VCS/2600 games that were developed by Jerry Lawsons company, Video Soft, are at last being released! The games were mentioned in press releases from the early 1980s and were long thought to have been just one of the many vaporware titles that never materialized. Not only do they exist in prototype form, but all were far enough along in development to be playable, with half of them considered to be complete!
Thanks to Jerry Lawson and the efforts of a few, dedicated Atari fans, the prototypes were archived, new artwork was created, and cartridges were produced. Each includes both a box and manual, and production is limited to 100 numbered copies of each title. Only 100 of each will ever be produced. This is the single-largest cache of unreleased Atari VCS/2600 prototypes to ever be released at one time!
Pre-orders are now being accepted, with carts to start shipping in late January. See the Digital Press webpage below for more information:
Occasionally GTW64 is passed on software which did in fact get a release, but a very limited one and which has not yet been preserved for others to enjoy.
Joe and the Serif is one such game, preserved by a contributor called Pudva, this is an interesting game released in Hungary (May need to know some Hungarian to play the game :) ), which also saw a release on the C16/+4
You can grab a copy of the game here.
A big thanks to Pudva for digging this out, and Puchala László for the name correction.
NOTE: This was originally published back in 2011.
It’s that time of the year again. The Xmas update of Games That Weren’t is now launched, with plenty of findings and new materials, including:
And a little hint of what’s to come in 2011…
‘STARGLIDER 2’ – All remains recovered and being worked on.
Enjoy at http://www.gtw64.co.uk
Carl Muller did a fantastic job squeezing in Speedball 2 onto the Commodore 64 back in 1991. However, it was at a cost in various areas … and most notably was for some of the in-between screens.
Commodore Format in particular had printed a much higher quality version of the defeat image and larger than what was in the final game. Carl luckily still had it, so here it is:
Hopefully we may see more materials, and possibly earlier builds in the future.
Now for something which isn’t worth a full entry on the GTW64 site, but is worthy of a mention.
Recently a prototype of System 3’s 1991 racer/shooter Turbocharge on the Commodore 64 has been uncovered by TMR/Cosine, originally preserved to obtain its tunes. The main difference compared to the final game in this one level preview is that the game music is composed by Reyn Ouwehand, who was to be the original composer for the game. Music was switched to both Sean Connolly and Marc Francois towards the end of development.
Reyn’s music covers all sound channels in this version, compared to Sean/Marc’s music which was just 2 channels to leave the 3rd sound channel free for SFX.
From what I can see, there is very little else that is different compared to the final game – nothing seems to be that different graphically, though there may be some very subtle gameplay tweaks. The final game felt a little more solid.
You can now grab the turbocharge-proto file and play on an emulator. Enjoy!
Please visit our new GTW Vic 20 page at https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/vic-20-games-that-werent/
Many thanks to Mark Jones for helping to recover more bits and pieces from the original Flood 2 write up!. This includes many designs and mockups, as well as an interview and some disk based materials!
https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2010/09/28/flood-2-bullfrog-so-close-yet-so-far%E2%80%A6/
Enjoy!
Although a few weeks old news now, with the addition just now of some previously unseen development materials, we thought it would be worth mentioning news on the main site about the up and coming new development.
That’s right, with the original salvaged materials – the game is finally to be completed with around 25 lines of parallax and 12 levels of action. The game is pretty much being done from scratch, improving vastly the amount that will be squeezed into the game.
More details, including the original and scrapped development from 1989 can be read about here: https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/hawkeye-2/
With thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni regarding materials from the new version (which seems to have stalled).
After a few months offline, Games That Weren’t is back – with a slightly new lick of paint – though not too dissimilar to the old site.
So what happened?… Unfortunately the hosting disappeared and bang went all our content. Sadly with no access to the posts, I have had to scrape what I can from the Google caches and also the Web Archive. As a result, we have had a few casulties (In particular the Konix AMC’89 article sadly :-( ) , but most of the old site has been re-posted here and preserved.
Sadly the PCGTW and 3DO GTW sites are still unavailable, but i’m hoping these will be back soon!
The one positive thing to come out of everything is that it forced my hand to update the site and its functionality, with better Social media integration (and also a far better admin interface for us to use!).
So now on with the show!….
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.
