Last updated on August 23rd, 2023 at 10:45 am
Browsing the excellent work that is done on TheGamesThat Werent-C64,
We highlight here 9 titles that deserve to be mentioned as real diamonds in the roof.
We offer you the best of The C64 Lost Games :
1) Abrakadabra(Creators – 2003) :
#########################
A superb graphic , a fight of a witch against a giant demon troll into a cave defending himself with quakes generated from his hits against the rocks, it’s all that you can find in this preview leaving the rest upon your imagination .
It looks like a Risk sequel but also a sequel to Scramble.
Graphics and control are neat.
#################################################################
3) Born in Space (1994 Talentebank):
Horizontal Shoot-Em-up , very impressive background scenario .
##############################################################################
4) Catch 23 (Martech – 1987) :
Review from CVG :
The story goes as follows (Thanks to a CVG clipping).. “The game was to be a 3D vector graphic arcade adventure where you control a futuristic mercenary out to steal plans for a revolutionary orbital interceptor code-named the CK 23.
Able to take off the land like any conventional aircraft, the CK 23 can lie in wait in orbit ready to blast back into the atmosphere at frightening speed, to intercept and destroy enemy missile and laser weaponry. The CK 23 test development site is the most secret and heavily guarded military complex on earth. Situated on a lonely and now deserted island, it is guarded by armed patrols, tanks, electric fencing and surveillance cameras.
The island is also criss-crossed by a shuttle network which used to allow for rapid transport for the now departed civilian workforce. It is your mission to explore the island and find the heart of the development complex. Once there you must steal the design of the CK 23 and then set a time delay mine in the nuclear reactor. The action takes place on a moonless night, hence you have been provided with a military image enhancer.
Using advanced 3D vector grahpics, with full collision detection, the player sees an accurate representation of his world as he moves within it. Catch 23 will sell for £8.95 on cassette, with the 64C disk retailing for £12.95 and the Amstrad disk, £13.95.”
###################################################
5) Colony (Jon Woods – 1996) :
>Colony is what can only be described as a cross between Phil Nicolson’s Deadline and Defender. Featuring little men which you have to protect and save for your Colony (Hence the name).
Finally, in 2009… Vinny Mainolfi helped in uncovering yet more remains when he backed up an old Commodore Cracker fanzine disk. On here was a special preview with a different title screen and a slightly different preview with no sound and different panels. So yet more to check out!. We learn from this that actually Parallel Logic were originally going to be releasing the game!… this must have fell through when PL left the C64. Jazzcat has kindly taken the relevant files and also some clean note files and previews uncracked and given us an extra D64 to add to the download archive.
################################################
6) Dragon Slayer ( Linel – 1990) :
We searched this games for decades until we found this entry in GTW64 and sharing our info with them .
Created by Hans Ippisch who was interviewed in an old magazine. A question posed to him was about any unfinished projects which were gathering dust.
His reply was that he had started on a game called “Dragon Slayer”, which only one level was ever almost finished.
The game was in fact to be a title released by Linel on the Amiga mainly, but seems a port for the C64 was also unofficially on the cards too. The game was mentioned in various magazines, and Games Machine had a Amiga shot, which we’ve included here.
In this level, you can fight against a giant dragon in high resolution graphics. Graphically impressive, you couldn’t really do much apart from stare at the animations for a few seconds.
This was spread as a demo by the programmer and is all what remains of this game. No extras or additional bits exist, unless Hans Ippisch can confirm otherwise?
Promising preview, never off the start line… What happened to the title from Linel which seemed to promise so much?
################################################################
7) Monster Museum ( Palace Software 1989) :
>Monster Museum was mentioned in March 1989 of The Games Machine as coming soon with the following blurb – “Other games on Palace’s mean menu include Monster Museum, an arcade adventure with graphics by Gary Carr and main programming by Andy Wilson (Dan Dare fame).” … Was this another result of Palace sinking and Titus not wanting to pick up and release?
When we did some research on the net, some Amstrad sites were found to have listed it, but it is missing for them too. So we had to keep digging, firstly by finding some of the Gang of Five such as Andy Wilson to find out more.
In early 2009, GTW were in touch with one of the Gang of Five, who suggested that they had a bunch of disks for Monster Museum, but wasn’t sure what was on them. GTW obtained the disks and backed these up, but were unable to release what we found until permission was granted from the original coder Andy Wilson.
########################################################
8) Time Crystal (Sachs Entertainment – 1985) :
For a game like this one looking back at 1985 I think we as kids were ready to get it or to die at any cost ! Too bad it remains only a shaping light from a ghost diamond …1985…
As you can see, the game’s graphics are gorgeous, and way ahead of their time for a C64…. now I could imagine the graphic rating of this being around 100% in Zzap 64…. :)….
Some really lovely animations in the preview, with a really nice intro with some eery music to go with it. Its kinda like a Paul Norman game, with nice graphics.
Its a very small preview…. and it seems to be very bugged…. and when you die, you cannot restart (or can you?)… but all in all, it looked very promising.
The game was started by Jim Sachs and never finished. As you will see from the demo, he did excellent graphics work, but he quickly left the C64 for the Amiga. Apparently he went on to work at Cinemaware.
The game never progressed further than the preview here, basically Jim tells GTW that piracy in the C64 market made him realize that it wasn’t worth finishing the project.
Hopefully Jim will shed some light some day on his old production… Now Jim is famous for producing some brilliant Fish Tank simulators. A recent interview was also done with Jim which you can find here and talks about the title.
################################################################
9) Zamzara 2 ( Hewson – 1988) :
Zamzara was in fact released, but light was shed recently on a rather different game which was shaping up originally by Jukka Tapanimaki.
Gameplay is awesome .
Zamzara was originally going to be very “Impossible Mission” like, with the aim to collect Genes and built DNA. Hewson loved what they were seeing, but thought that the game was way too complex for people to play. As a result, Jukka reprogrammed the game from scratch and it became very adventure like. Hewson took another look at the game and felt that it was now a bit boring[…]
############################################################