Games That Weren’t (GTW) is a large archive dedicated to documenting and finding lost, unreleased and cancelled video games across many different platforms. We also cover prototypes of released games, showing early differences and help with software not yet preserved. It started with an offline archive being slowly created from 1994/95 with the help of friends/contacts, grew into a regular Games That Weren’t article in Commodore Zone magazine from 1997 and then the online archive was born in 1999 (celebrating our 25th anniversary in 2024).
The site is a non-profit, labour-of-love project with no financial backing. We preserve lost materials and video game history purely out of passion for long-term digital preservation. If you would like to support us in some way, please help spread the word about our project and help share posts that you find interesting or would like to help us recover. Each page has a social media share link, all of which helps to widen the net and hopefully learn about certain titles within our archives.
How it all started…
Games That Weren’t was first inspired by a Commodore 64 magazine article by Ian Osborne in a late issue of Commodore Force in 1993. Entitled, “That Was the Game That Wasn’t“, the feature was of great interest to a young 11yr old Frank Gasking who is writing this page now, and shed light on titles that had never been released.
I wondered what it would be like to actually play some of these games that were shown and began contacting friends in the C64 scene to try and pick up copies of those games mentioned in the article. After managing to get hold of a few of them that had leaked out, I researched through many old magazines and started to uncover even more unreleased / incomplete games – collating my own list of titles to research, with an attempt to learn more and recover them.
It was clear that Ian’s article had only merely scratched the surface, and so began a long search and investigation which has lasted around 30 years by 2024. At the time though back around 1997 – enough information was gathered where a regular feature was created for the now sadly deceased Commodore Zone magazine, named “Games That Weren’t“.
Popularity of the feature encouraged myself to create a dedicated web site to cover more about other unreleased games on the Commodore 64. Launched in 1999, GTW64 was born and grew rapidly, where games began to be found thanks to the wonders of the Internet and the links that were made with developers that were coming online. We were one of the first sites dedicated to unreleased and lost games at the time. Here is an early glimpse from Web Archive.
It became an archive where you could download many lost / unfinished games for the Commodore 64, but also learn more about certain titles, or at least collate information on those which were yet to be found.
Building upon what was once just a C64 archive, eventually gamesthatwerent.com was created as our primary website, dedicated to covering all platforms. As well as our GTW64 site, we also have an Amiga GTW site which is ran by Adrian Simpson. Occasionally we will also post news from other preservation projects, but we mainly share news and other findings via our social media streams, including twitter.
We need you!
Preserving gaming history has never been the work of just one group or person, it is a collective effort. For decades, countless passionate people and communities have come together to uncover lost games and ensure that history isn’t forgotten, and its the only way we can preserve as much as we can.
Collaboration is at the heart of what we do, and finding lost games is made possible by YOU! Every contribution, no matter how small. Whether it’s credits, brief information, or a tip – it all drives us forward in our mission. We value every bit of help we receive and always aim to credit those who contribute in any way. If you’ve been involved with a piece of unreleased software, please reach out to us.
Sharing our work and research
We are generally happy if people use our research for producing articles, as the more articles out there on certain games, the more widespread the details become of that title – plus of course the better the chances of something being recovered! However, all we ask is that you please make an acknowledgement to the source in some way.
Sadly, we have had many instances of late where we have gathered/published research (in our own limited and spare time), only for it to be lifted without any credit or acknowledgement. This has also spread to recoveries themselves in recent years.
