Nintendo reveals three cancelled Kirby games

Before this week’s release of Kirby’s Return to Dreamland, it had been eleven years since a mainline Kirby game to make it out to the public. So, what took so long? As it turns out, HAL Laboratory was busy working on not one, but three Kirby projects.

The first title, as most fans will remember, was shown during E3 2005 through screenshots and a brief glimpse of footage. The second game featured Copy Abilities with a pop-up book art style. The final project contained 3D gameplay. All three of these titles were canned, though it seems that HAL chose some concepts to include in Kirby’s Return to Dreamland.

The full discussion (along with screenshots) from the latest Iwata Asks interview – now available in English can be found after the break.

Kawase: As for that 11-year gap between home console Kirby games, right after Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, we immediately began working on a new Kirby game. That was during the time of the Nintendo GameCube system, and screen shots were shown at the E3.

Iwata: “Were shown”? You sound so detached about it! (laughs)

Kawase: Oh, believe me, I’m not! (laughs) But after that, it never got updated, and I’m sure some people would wonder and ask, “Whatever happened to that?” To some, it had become an object of mystery.

Iwata: The release date went unannounced forever.

Kawase: Yes. Actually, there are three lost Kirby games. The first one is the one that pictures were shown of at E3. It was a Kirby game based on the concept of four-person simultaneous gameplay. That was when I learned how difficult it is to make a game that is both multi-player and single-player.

Iwata: If it had come out, it would have been soon after Kirby Air Ride.

Kawase: That’s right. The second one was an experiment with extremely challenging gameplay that placed Kirby in 3D space and allowed players to freely move around. But unfortunately, we weren’t able to achieve the quality we hoped for and it never reached completion.

The third one involved an animated Kirby sort of like a pop-up book. We renewed the Copy Abilities, and tried to power it up. We spent 11 years… making and abandoning these three games.

Iwata: During that time, screen shots were shown and release dates went unannounced for a long time. Then the Nintendo GameCube system changed to the Wii console. Miyamoto-san says that video games are something you never really complete. It’s hard when a game simply refuses to come together.

Kawase: We wanted to bring it out when the fans wanted, but the movement wouldn’t feel right or we wanted to deliver more of a surprise to the fans, and we couldn’t bring one out in final form. We experienced that difficulty for 11 years.