The Games That Weren't

Now larger than both the movie and music industries combined, the video game industry has provided more than 40 glorious years of interactive entertainment across a plethora of hardware platforms, including consoles, computers and handheld devices. We truly are spoilt for choice when it comes to picking something to play, and that dizzying degree of choice is growing by the day. 

Even so, there are a great many video games which have sadly never seen the light of day for a variety of reasons – and many of these have incredible mysteries and gripping tales attached to them, both unsolved and untold. The Games That Weren't aims to lift the lid on these stories and give these unknown titles a chance to shine – even if we weren't able to actually play them as their developers intended.

Giving an illustrated snapshot of a wide range of unreleased games between the years of 1975 and 2015 and covering systems from the Atari 2600 right up to the Sony PlayStation 4, The Games That Weren't is the biggest book Bitmap Books has ever created and includes titles across a variety of arcade, home computer, console, handheld and mobile platforms. Years in the making, it's packed to bursting point with exclusive content, in-depth interviews and much more besides.

Many of these lost classics are expanded upon in exceptional detail, with those involved with their design and development sharing their untold stories and recollections – as well as shedding some light on intriguing mysteries along the way. Assets and screenshots – some of which have never been seen until now – help illustrate the narratives, and in the case of games for which no images exist, there are specially-created artist's impressions which give a tantalising visual interpretation of what could have been.

Covering more than 80 games – including Star Fox 2, Green Lantern and SimMars – across a 40-year span and packed with content such as five specially-created 'Hardware That Wasn't' blueprint pieces and interviews with industry legends such as David Crane, Jeff Minter, Matthew Smith, Dan Malone, Eugene Jarvis, Dylan Cuthbert, Andrew and Philip Oliver, Geoff Crammond, Scott Adams, Jon Hare and many more, The Games That Weren't showcases and pays tribute to well-known and not so well-known unreleased titles, as well as games you might never have heard of – until now. As if that wasn't enough, the book has been produced to the traditional high standard Bitmap Books readers have come to expect, with eye-catching fluorescent colours and high-quality binding on superb paper stock.

While the games industry has much to celebrate, there's something uniquely captivating in looking at titles that never made it to the finish line – and The Games That Weren't will hopefully keep the memory of these failed masterpieces alive.

Specifications:

- 644 pages

- 170mm x 210mm

- Lithographic print

- Hardback

- Sewn binding

- Coloured bookmark ribbon

- Special fluorescent ink throughout

- Shrink wrapped

Detailed features cover games such as
Sebring (Arcade), The Last Ninja (Atari 800/130XE, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, Tandy Colour Computer 3 and ZX Spectrum 48K), Solar Jetman (Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga 500 and ZX Spectrum 128K), Chips Challenge (Nintendo Entertainment System), Green Lantern (Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, SEGA Mega Drive and Super Nintendo), Rolling Thunder (Atari Lynx), Virtual Tank (Nintendo Virtual Boy), Deathwatch(Atari Jaguar), Star Fox 2 (Super Nintendo), Ridge Racer (PC), SimMars (Apple Macintosh and PC), Half-Life (Nintendo GameCube and SEGA Dreamcast), Stunt Car Racer Pro (Microsoft Xbox, PC and Sony PlayStation 2), Eye of the Moon(Apple iOS) plus many more...