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 since 1999.
Please Browse our archive and discover the many entries that we host for many different platforms.
Bonk was a very popular character from Hudson Soft that featured in a number of popular platforming titles, especially on the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16. The first title for the game was known as PC Genjin in Japan, and BC Kid everywhere else and would almost make it to the Virtual Boy too.
The popularity would see a number of other titles produced, many of which featured on the NES and SNES platforms. So, it comes as no surprise perhaps that when Nintendo announced the Virtual Boy, Bonk would look to try and make an appearance. Continue reading →
Mighty Max was based on the popular toys and subsequent cartoon of the time (huge in the US!), and was initially developed on the Amiga 1200 as the primary platform, with possible plans for an enhanced edition for the CD32 shortly afterwards. It wasn’t long though until focus would switch over to console editions.
Developed by WJS, who had done a series of titles for the likes of Psygnosis, Ocean and Microprose, the team had approached Ocean with their very own platform title around 1993 time. Ocean liked what they saw, and asked the team to reskin the game into a Mighty Max licenced title. Continue reading →
A very short entry for now and for a potential sequel to Soccer Kid, a platformer game where you control a kid with a football who can perform a series of special moves to defeat enemies and progress through the game.
It was a successful title that saw conversion to a number of platforms, including SNES, Playstation and many more. The game had built upon the engine that had been created for Arabian Nights. Continue reading →
In August 2023, Chris Wilkins (Fusion Retro Books) entrusted Games That Weren’t with the task of preserving all of Archer’s development disks. Whilst going through Archer’s 5.25″ work disks, a series of significant discoveries were made which show how Archer was testing out different Arcade concepts as he got to grips with the hardware.
We have created a special video that goes through the findings and talks about them in more detail:
Within the disks we found early graphic tests for Donkey Kong, Tempest and also a Pole Position clone that Archer had named Road Roller, which included what seems to be a series of road routine drawing tests. Continue reading →
Platform: Atari 2600 (possibly VIC-20 and others too – unconfirmed)
Team member Fabrizio Bartoloni recently brought to my attention a very intriguing title which SEGA announced as part of their first line up of games for various home platforms, including the Atari 2600. In particular, it was the rather cool game cover artwork that caught my eye.
Simply called Muffett, the game was based around Little Miss Muffet, and was advertised by SEGA in their press kit and at Winter CES in 1983. It showed a slightly darker/creepy variation of the nursery rhyme character, wearing some kind of singular shades and firing a small gun. In the background you can see a series of spiders crawling down in the background. Continue reading →
Then we have a new batch of titles added to the archives thanks to our contributors (each credited in each piece). The archive continues to grow even today!
Then as usual – we finish with a series of updates to entries already in the archive. Details of what has changed/been added can be found in the history tab for each title.
Allan has been helping out GTW64 for many years with various preservation efforts, and he is now uploading many more over at Archive.org, so be sure to check things out:
ICOM Simulations, the makers of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, were to follow up with a title called Global Golf: The Earth Invitational.
Announced around Summer 1993, the game would give you the chance to play on hypothetical holes on places like Everest, the desert and the Grand Canyon. The game had been in development for sometime, and PC Player magazine showed a single screenshot of the game in action (in what seems to be at the Grand Canyon). Continue reading →
Platforms: Commodore Amiga 1200/CD32, PC and Game Boy Advance
It may have been a basic fighting game with simple graphics, but Franko: The Crazy Revenge did pretty well in the Polish games market in 1994 and has a hardcore set of fans today. It resulted in a sequel that was started in 1995, with a whole host of new features and enhancements over the original game.
Early build on either Amiga/PC.
When mentioned in snippets as early as 1995, the game was said to be including digitized backgrounds and characters, with a series of new moves being developed. You would be able to interact more with your surroundings, picking up garbage cans and the like and using as projectiles, and the game was to be a lot gorier! Your main character would also have over 200 frames of animation, compared to the dozen or so which the original game’s character had. Continue reading →
Following on from our report about a possible Gods conversion on the PC Engine, we now take a look at what seemed to be a conversion of Toaplan’s Snow Bros that was due for release in the early 1990s.
A screenshot from the arcade. Not PC Engine, as confirmed by article in scans.
Advertised in Electronic Gaming Monthly Magazines in September 1992, it appeared with a number of others for sale from a company called Gametronix. Present was a single screenshot, which may or may not have been from the PC Engine game.
Considering just how well Parasol Stars came out on the platform, there’s no doubt that Snow Bros would have been a great fit for the machine. But as with conversions on other platforms, such as the Amiga, the game would never see release in the end.
As the game was shown just in a short advert, there was no detail about when the game was coming out or how it was looking/playing. The screenshot may have even been from a different platform, and therefore we don’t know yet if any conversion was actually ever started or not.
Paranoia Dragon found a suggestion that Naxat Soft were the intended publisher, so there is a possible lead to try and found out more and if anything was ever started.
Did anything get started, or was it all just vapourware overall? If you know anything more about the conversion, please do get in touch.
With thanks to Paranoia Dragon for flagging up the title and for the scans, GDRI for digging out a news snippet on the game and Gaming Alexandria for the scan.
Gallery
A PC Engine screenshot, or a screenshot from another platform?
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.
