Platforms: PC, Sony PlayStation

Special Forces was an ambitious military action and strategy game proposed by Psygnosis Stroud in 1997, with versions planned for PC and Sony PlayStation. Although the game was intended for release during early 1999, it seemingly disappeared without trace, and we’re currently unsure whether it progressed beyond the initial planning stages.

The game has come to our attention thanks to Neil Thomas from The Retro Collective, who very kindly got in touch after the museum received a donation containing an original Psygnosis concept submission for the game. Neil has since digitised the entire document, giving us a fascinating look at what was being planned.

The surviving document is dated 13 May 1997 and marked as Draft 1.6, produced by Psygnosis Stroud and written by Paul Walker, Matt Wilkinson and Derek Ward. It consists of three main sections covering the game’s overall design, PC technical considerations and a separate PlayStation technical overview.

Special Forces was intended to be a third-person, non-linear 3D action adventure, mixing the exploration and combat of games such as Tomb Raider with a more strategic approach to military operations. Players would command an elite international unit operating under the United Nations, taking on covert missions around the world.

The concept included a variety of possible operations, ranging from hostage rescues and reconnaissance missions to destroying enemy installations, recovering hazardous materials and even infiltrating an enemy equivalent of Area 51.

One of the most interesting features was the planned team system. Players would select four operatives from a choice of eight, representing different special forces units from around the world, including the SAS, US Rangers and Spetsnaz. Each character would have their own personality and specialist skills, which could improve as missions were completed.

During normal gameplay, the player would directly control one character while the remaining team members followed under computer control, reacting to the player’s actions. Alternatively, the PC version would offer a more strategic mode where players could plan attacks in advance, assigning individual team members targets, routes, weapons and timings.

The idea was to allow different approaches to the same mission. Players could sneak through enemy territory, launch direct assaults or combine both methods. Enemy forces were also intended to react dynamically, increasing patrols, repairing damaged installations and adapting their behaviour depending on what the player had done.

The technical documentation goes into considerable detail about the proposed artificial intelligence, with enemy soldiers assigned daily routines and controlled through a system of interconnected agents. This was intended to create the impression of a living environment, rather than simply having enemies waiting around for the player to encounter them.

Other planned features included motion-captured character animation, realistic military equipment, day and night environments and a laptop interface for viewing maps, receiving orders and planning operations. Multiplayer was also proposed, with up to 16 players competing across a network and a separate four-player cooperative mode.

Interestingly, the PlayStation version was not intended to be a direct conversion of the PC game. Due to hardware limitations, it would have featured smaller missions, simpler enemy behaviour and a greater emphasis on arcade-style action. The team size would also have been reduced to two characters, with the more detailed strategic planning removed.

The concept submission also gives us a rare glimpse into the financial and organisational planning behind a major game development project of the period. Psygnosis proposed an initial three-month design and planning phase beginning in June 1997, followed by full development from September.

The planned team included six programmers, four artists, a game design coordinator and a producer, with additional resources for music and motion capture. The overall project budget was estimated at approximately £1.19 million, with development scheduled to finish towards the end of 1998 ahead of a proposed early 1999 release.

There was clearly some enthusiasm for the concept internally. The document includes comments from various Psygnosis managers supporting the proposal, although several potential risks were identified, particularly around the complexity of the artificial intelligence and reliance on technology being developed by other Psygnosis studios.

One additional detail supplied alongside the document suggests that former SAS soldier and author Andy McNab was intended to feature as the main character, with plans to motion capture him for the game. This isn’t something we’ve yet been able to confirm from the surviving paperwork itself, but it’s an intriguing possibility.

Unfortunately, we don’t currently know what happened next. Was Special Forces formally approved and taken into development, or did it remain an ambitious proposal that never progressed beyond the planning stage? The surviving document provides an extensive outline of what Psygnosis hoped to create, but doesn’t establish whether any playable work was ever produced.

For now, we’ve included a selection of scans from the original submission within the gallery below, giving a glimpse of the game’s proposed design and development plans.

Stuart Maine got in touch almost immediately after we posted to confirm that he helped another team out on the game, and did some level designs, but the game never got past its pitch stage. The failed pitch then eventually morphed into Andy McNab’s Team SAS, which of course was recovered by Games That Weren’t through Stuart Maine’s kind donation the other year. Small world :)

With a huge thank you to Neil Thomas from The Retro Collective for digitising and sharing the surviving concept submission, and to the original contributor who donated the material to the museum.

Resources

• 1997 – Psygnosis – Special Forces Concept Submission

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Platforms: ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and Atari ST

Comic Relief is a now-annual charity fundraiser featuring live TV events and, of course, Red Nose Day. Back in the early Nineties it was biannual, and 1991 was Comic Relief year.

At this time, there was a thriving independent adventure scene. Thanks to adventure coding packages such as The Quill, PAWS and Graphic Adventure Creator, home storytellers could produce their own interactive fiction games which were then sold through mail order. Many leading video games magazines of the day had adventure sections which covered the indy scene, along with fanzines such as Adventure Probe.

It was to Adventure Probe that adventurer Allan Phillips wrote in March 1991 with an idea for a Comic Relief Adventure game. The idea was simple. The game would be co-written by readers of Adventure Probe, with each contributor writing a single location. The aim of this location would be to find and consume a dream pill, which then took the gamer on to the next location. The game as a whole would be a dream sequence, giving contributors ‘plenty of scope for sci-fi/mystery/historical/humour.’ They would supply their contributions on paper, with Mr Phillips compiling them into the game. Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad and Atari ST versions were planned.

By the next issue of Probe (April 1991), four readers had already written their contributions. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Allan Phillips had to pull out of the project for health reasons, and the whole thing died with him. Contributor Ian Osborne coded his own contribution, The Hospital (ZX Spectrum), and used it as a b-side for an adventure he wrote, but as far as we know, that’s the only part of Comic Relief Adventure that survived. You can download The Hospital below.

A huge thank you to Ian Osborne for contributing this piece to the website, which is lovely to see after him inspiring Games That Weren’t as a whole :)

Download

• https://worldofspectrum.net/item/0015485

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Platforms: Commodore 64, VIC-20, Apple II, Atari, Coleco ADAM, IBM PC, TI-99/4A

A rather obscure adventure game now, which was recently highlighted on Reddit after an advert was discovered in the June 1985 issue of Boys’ Life magazine.Netozelius: The Forbidden Outpost was advertised by C&M Enterprises of Philadelphia as an advanced adventure game for enthusiasts, priced at just $4.00 plus 50 cents postage.

Interestingly, the game was advertised for a huge range of machines, including the Commodore 64, VIC-20, Apple II, Atari, Coleco ADAM, IBM PC, TI-99/4A and various TRS-80 models.

A further advert discovered by Reddit users described the game as compatible with virtually all BASIC systems, suggesting that it may have been supplied as a BASIC program listing rather than a conventional cassette or disk release. However, this has yet to be confirmed.

The same company also advertised another adventure called Placek’s Treasure, which may be another missing title worth investigating. For now, no surviving copies, screenshots or reviews of Netozelius have been identified, and we’re not even certain whether the game was ever supplied to customers who ordered it.

Could anyone have purchased a copy back in 1985, or perhaps have an original listing tucked away somewhere? If you know anything more about the game or C&M Enterprises, please do get in touch.

You can read the original Reddit discussion where the search began, including further research into the company and its other advertised titles.

With thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni for highlighting, ex-asperis for highlighting the game and to the r/vintagecomputing community for the additional research.

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• Stargate 64 – 1983 Tec Software
• Amphibian – 1983 Syrinx Software (Note – this was released in the UK as Froggy)
• X-Bert – 1983 Computer Education Center

Enjoy and we hope to have more for you soon!

Download

• Three1983C64games

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Allan has recently uploaded Word Games from MECC (Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation), bringing the number of titles he has preserved from the company so far to four. He is also hoping to add Friendly Computer soon, with a copy currently on its way from the UK.

Other finds include Ducks, which appears to be missing from GameBase64, and Glass Computer, which also had a Commodore 128 version.

Allan has additionally been documenting software from IVL Technologies, including Hear, Hear, which requires the company’s Pitchrider cartridge to run. The cartridge was designed for educational and MIDI-related use.

You can explore Allan’s preservation work and download the available material via the two Internet Archive searches below.

MECC preservation releases:
https://archive.org/search?query=subject%3A%22Minnesota+Educational+Computing+Corporation%22+commodore

IVL Technologies preservation releases:
https://archive.org/search?query=ivl+technologies+commodore

November 2026 update: Allan Pinkerton has been busy again, with further Commodore 64 educational software added to the Internet Archive.

The latest addition is Farm Manager, also known as Cyber Farmer, from Pro-Ag Software Inc., following his earlier preservation of Hog Farm.

Allan has also highlighted that the MECC collection now contains 12 titles, although there are still gaps to fill. In particular, Path Tactics remains missing, despite being listed as available for the Commodore 64 within MECC’s 1987 catalogue. Counting is another title Allan has identified as missing.

Hopefully copies of these remaining titles will surface in time, and we’ll continue to highlight Allan’s preservation work as more material becomes available.

Farm Manager / Cyber Farmer:
https://archive.org/details/farm-manager-cyber-farmer-vol-3-manual-pro-ag-software-inc

MECC preservation collection:
https://archive.org/search?tab=all&query=minnesota+educational+computing+corporation+mecc+commodore&sort=-publicdate

With a huge thank you to Allan Pinkerton for continuing to preserve and share these often-overlooked pieces of Commodore software history.

Dating from around 1985 and reportedly created by Alp Kaan Akal, Dallas Petrol was a Turkish-language strategy game where players competed in the oil industry, buying wells, drilling equipment and tankers before attempting to make their fortunes selling oil. Players could also sabotage rivals, including blowing up their oil wells!

One particularly interesting feature was the game’s use of Turkish speech, with spoken instructions and announcements during play.

Although not an unreleased game as such, Dallas Petrol had become rather obscure over the years until a copy was located and shared by members of the Turkish Commodore community in August 2018.

Tanaydin recently got in touch to highlight the game to us, in case it was still missing from any of the major Commodore 64 databases. We thought it was worth a quick mention to help raise awareness of this unusual title and its earlier preservation.

You can read more about the game and find the surviving disk image within the original discussion over at Commodore.gen.tr.

With thanks to Tanaydin Sirin for highlighting the game, and to the Commodore.gen.tr community for locating and sharing it.

https://www.commodore.gen.tr/forum/index.php?topic=16052.15

Platform: PC

Psychasm was a very intriguing action game in development at Inscape around 1995, the studio responsible for a number of CD-ROM titles including The Dark Eye, Drowned God and Bad Day on the Midway. Very little seems to have ever been documented about this project, and it would ultimately disappear without a trace.

The game was highlighted to Games That Weren’t thanks to JomSpoons, who has been researching Inscape and managed to uncover several rare references to the title, as well as tracking down composer Glenn Scott Lacey, who worked on the game’s music and audio.

One of the earliest known references comes from an interview with Inscape founder Michael Nash in Computer Player, Volume 2, Issue 2. At the time, Inscape had yet to publish any software and Nash discussed four projects that the newly established studio had in development: Bad Day on the Midway, Devo Presents: Adventures of the Smart Patrol, The Dark Eye and Psychasm.

Where the other projects would eventually make it out, Psychasm wasn’t so fortunate. Nash described Psychasm as Inscape’s more straightforward action title, with gameplay along the lines of Doom but featuring high-resolution graphics. Its premise involved a world infected by a fictional computer virus, with the player travelling through different stages and attempting to destroy the virus wherever it was growing.

A single image accompanied the coverage, providing what currently seems to be our only known glimpse of the game itself. Psychasm was clearly being treated as a genuine part of Inscape’s planned line-up rather than simply an internal experiment. JomSpoons also discovered promotional Inscape matchbooks listing the title alongside the company’s other forthcoming releases, further suggesting that there were solid plans to bring the game to market.

Unfortunately, very little else about the development seems to have survived publicly. We don’t yet know who was responsible for the main programming or artwork, exactly how far development progressed, or precisely why the project was eventually abandoned.

One further clue was discovered on the website of composer Glenn Scott Lacey, where Psychasm is included amongst his previous game credits. JomSpoons contacted Glenn in May 2026 to see if he could remember anything more about the mysterious project. Thankfully, he could.

“Yes, I worked on that game composing music and doing audio,” Glenn told JomSpoons. “At the time I had a recording studio as part of Class6 Entertainment. It was quite a long time ago, but I do remember that the game was very creative and had small characters in it and that I developed a language for them. They sounded like a darker version of a Minion.”

His recollections provide some particularly interesting details that don’t seem to have been documented in magazine coverage. As well as creating music and audio, Glenn was developing an invented language for some of the game’s characters, suggesting there may have been considerably more personality and world building involved than the brief Doom-style description initially suggested.

The soundtrack itself also seems to have been taking an unusual direction:

“Some of the music I wrote had a 1940s feel, some of it with vocals,” Glenn continued. “The game was still in development when I started work on it and as I remember it didn’t go much farther than that, though since I was not part of their company I don’t know the particulars.”

That last point is important when trying to establish what happened to Psychasm. Glenn remembers the project still being under development when he became involved, but doesn’t believe it progressed substantially further during his time working on it. He did offer one possible explanation for its disappearance, although he was careful to stress that he wasn’t directly involved with Inscape itself.

“I believe Inscape shutting down may have been the reason that the game was abandoned. At that time CD-ROM games were very forward thinking and popular. Unfortunately, the whole industry took a financial downturn and many entertainment companies including the company I was part of closed.”

For now, we therefore can’t say with certainty exactly why Psychasm was cancelled. It may have been connected with the wider problems eventually faced by Inscape, but further information from someone directly involved with the game’s production would be needed to establish the full story.

Interestingly, Glenn’s memories of the soundtrack have stayed with him. After being contacted by JomSpoons, he said the enquiry had jogged his memory about the music and that he may someday write something for his YouTube channel in the style of the game. At present though, Psychasm itself remains something of a mystery.

We know it was being publicly discussed as part of Inscape’s early line-up, was promoted alongside the company’s other games and had progressed far enough for a screenshot to be published. We now also know that Glenn Scott Lacey had begun producing music and audio for the project, including vocals and a language for some of its small characters.

What we don’t yet know is how much of the game was actually completed or whether anything from the development still survives today. Given the distinctive nature of Inscape’s output, it would be fascinating to see what Psychasm was becoming beyond the single surviving image. Hopefully this entry may jog a few more memories and perhaps help us identify others who worked on the project.

If you were involved with Psychasm, or happen to have any further screenshots, builds, artwork, documentation, music or other material relating to the game, please do get in touch.

With a huge thank you to JomSpoons for carrying out the research, highlighting the game to us and contacting Glenn Scott Lacey, and to Glenn Scott Lacey for very kindly sharing his memories of the project. Also to Video Game History Foundation Archive for the Computer Player scan and archive.is for the ebay auction images.

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1 new entry added

Alla Ricerca dello Scarabeo d’Oro

Several unpreserved educational titles saved

Thanks to the continuing amazing work of Allan Pinkerton, yet more educational titles have been fully preserved and saved.

See more details

11 updates added

Benidorm, Giana 2 – Arthur And Martha In Future World, Hagar The Horrible, Katakis, Murder!, Stargate, Touchstone, Tyger Tyger, Warlord, Wild Fire, World Darts

Platforms: ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC (potentially Commodore 64 too)

Springclean is an intriguing unreleased title from PAL Developments that was due to be published by Virgin Mastertronic around 1989. This one was actually completed, with master disks produced for both the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC versions. The game was developed by Rich Stevenson, who very kindly got in touch with GTW to reveal that the source and master disks still survive within his personal archive.

According to Rich, Springclean was loosely inspired by Ultimate’s classic Cookie, with a character called Mrs. Mopp taking the starring role. Interestingly, the concept doesn’t sound too far removed from Tina Billett’s 1984 ZX Spectrum game Mrs Mopp. Despite development being completed, circumstances surrounding PAL Developments’ publishing agreement meant that Springclean was ultimately left on the shelf.

The game had been produced as part of a multi-game deal between PAL Developments and Virgin Mastertronic and would have been the final title released under the arrangement. However, PAL had already fulfilled the required number of games suggested by the agreement, leaving Springclean surplus to requirements.

There were later plans to potentially rebrand the game for release through the Hi-Tec label, but these also came to nothing and Springclean remained unreleased.

There is also a curious Commodore 64 connection. Ariolasoft had released a C64 version of Mrs. Mop back in 1987 (ironically by an unrelated John Stevenson), yet the same game later appeared on Zzap! 64’s Megatape 28 covermount in 1992, where it was presented as a previously unreleased title associated with PAL Developments/Hi-Tec.

As the game had already been commercially released several years earlier, it’s unclear exactly what was going on. It may suggest that PAL Developments or Hi-Tec had acquired some form of rights to the game or character with plans for another release, but for now we don’t have enough information to say for certain whether this was directly connected to Rich’s Springclean project.

Dave Palmer recalled Mrs Mop in an email back in 2006, and that Rich was involved – but is likely thinking of Springclean. He recalled:

“Haha… A real blast from the past… Mrs Mop… it was called this for a bit of fun on my part, it was my nick name for my mother from when I was a kid… Honestly cannot remember much about it but I think it was a game written by Richard Stevenson for me? Will apply the grey matter to it.”

Back to the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC versions, this is one lost game where we know the material hasn’t disappeared over the intervening years. Rich still has the original source and master disks for both versions, along with other material from his development career. He has also kindly supplied us with several photographs showing the loading screen and a glimpse of the game art, which you can see below.

For now, there are no plans to release the surviving builds, as Rich is currently documenting his development career and hopes to include a number of his missing games as additional material for the project. Hopefully we’ll get to learn much more about Springclean and his other unreleased titles in the future.

It’s nevertheless great to finally document the game within the archive and, most importantly, know that both completed versions still safely survive after all these years.

With a huge thank you to Rich Stevenson for getting in touch, sharing the story behind Springclean and providing the photographs for inclusion within the archive.

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Platform: Amstrad CPC

A short entry for an early Tennis game that was in development at Clockwize for the Amstrad CPC, and preserved thanks to Dean Hickingbottom. Unfortunately, it didn’t get very far at all – but we have a very early glimpse for you to take a look at.

The prototype just has a simple scrolling tennis court, with two players either end – the first of which can be moved around, but you cannot really hit the ball or anything, but you can make it move by pressing fire and moving the joystick. If you get the movement just right, it will scroll the pitch up and down.

It was simply just at a test stage by its creator David Bradley, who did the graphics and the code. Lurking on one of the disks was also a credits image which gives the game the name “Pro Tennis”. Of course, Codemasters released a Pro Tennis game on the Amstrad CPC – so could this have been a pitch from Clockwize to do the game?

Hopefully we will learn more in time – but this sadly seems to be all that exists of the game. If anything more does surface, then we’ll be sure to add to the page.

Download

• Preview_Tennis(CPC)

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