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Raidersofgaming’s
lostart
Videogamearchaeologist FrankGasking hasmadeithisbusinessto
trackdownmissing gamesand computers, asDavidCrookes reports
F
rank Gasking doesn’t need aleather
jacket. He has no need forafedora
either,although awoolly hat forwinter
and acap forsummer often come in handy.
Youcertainly won’t see him cracking a
12ft-long bullwhip.But swap asatchel fora
laptop bag and Gasking is as ready foraction
as amodern-dayIndiana Jones.
Gasking isn’t content with the many
hundreds of thousands of games released
over the past four decades. Instead, he
pursues those titles that were in development
but, forwhatever reason, were never
released. Blowing awaythe dust and
cobwebs, scrambling around in lofts and
basements, he calls them the ‘games that
weren’t’,and there are agoodnumber of
them out there,itwould seem.
“All around the world, thousands of
unreleased games have been recovered –
tens of thousands if you count asset
recovery,” he says.
Of those,Gasking has had ahand in
unearthing and documenting around 2,000
of them, each meticulously listed on his
website(www.gamesthatwerent.com).
“It’s very exciting indeed when you’ve
been looking foratitle forsuch along time
and you finally find and recover it,”headds.
⬆Daffy Duck was due to be released by Hi-Tecin
1992 but, despiteareview inZzap!64granting it a
score of 94%, it took 18 years to track it down
