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Iwata Asks: Kirby's Return to Dreamland (not 1, but 3 cancelled Kirby games!!!)

http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/kirby-dream-land/0/0

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.

maboroshi01.jpg


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.

maboroshi02.jpg


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.

maboroshi03.jpg


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.

God! What a waste! And apparently they were all near completion (particularly the 3rd game which is described as "painfully close to completion"!)

It's the GCN/Wii's own Starfox 2! (Except multiplied by 3!) Why not release them as downloads on the Wii U?! Yes a lot of it made its way into this game, but still. Such a shame.

On the plus side though, confirmation of something I always suspected!

Yamagami: Okay. I'm incredibly pleased that we were able to achieve a Kirby game with four-person gameplay, but HAL Laboratory has really outdone themselves in a lot of details as well. For example, when your Kirby's hit points run low, the other players can help you, and the gesture for sharing HP is a kiss! That's so cute it's unbearable! I hope everyone will play with their friends and have their characters kiss each other. Everyone will immediately fall for the game the first time they see how cute that is! (laughs)

So they DO kiss when sharing health! I sure hope that you don't see anyone sharing with King DeDeDe...
 
linko9 said:
Why did that third game not come out!!! It looks amazing.

Not even Hitoshi Yamagami knows!

Sure. When first approached about it, I couldn't understand why the three previous games had been canceled. I thought if I could unravel that mystery, I would be able to come up with a measure against it.

But looking at each of the games, they were all fairly complete. Even if I gathered info on why they got cancelled, I couldn't quite grasp the reason. So I stopped looking for the reason and decided to work with the parts that already existed. Then I tapped Hattori-san, who's good at lining up parts.
 

Sloane

Banned
Interesting but why would they (almost) complete those 3 games? I mean, if they didn't work, they must have know much earlier? What a waste of time and resources.

Pietepiet said:
Oh man, all of those look so fun!
I can imagine the second one being difficult to control. No idea about the first one, but the third looks like it could be fun.
 
3D Kirby game looks the most exciting to me since it'd be a first for the franchise. 1st and 3rd prototypes while great looking sort of just look like the two different halves of Return to Dreamland.

How is KRtD btw?
 

Triton55

Member
Wait, so Kirby, Meta Knight, Dedede, and Waddle Dee kiss each other?

Can't wait for the Brawl in the Family strip about that.
 
Oh man, those last two look really fun, especially the open world one. What a shame so much work went into them for nothing. They really should try to release them in some form. If they're all 70%-80% complete, I'd imagine a huge return in profit if they just finished their development and released them as 3DS titles. It could sure use some games.
 

Michan

Member
The third looks like a really natural progression from the original NES/SNES games. It's too bad it'll never see the light of day :(
 

cw_sasuke

If all DLC came tied to $13 figurines, I'd consider all DLC to be free
Hope they put that 3D Space Kirby game on 3DS, it looks interesting.
 
cw_sasuke said:
Hope they put that 3D Space Kirby game on 3DS, it looks interesting.

It reminds me of Super Mario 3D Land. Wouldn't surprise me to hear that some of its gameplay mechanics got repurposed into that game (just like how NSMBWii's multiplayer stemmed from Kirby Superstar)

Salih said:
who knows what other games Nintendo has canceled in the - let's say - last ten years.

Metroid Dread is one, you also have Project Hammer/Wii Crush, Stage Debut, Marionette, the various Mario 128 prototypes and Rollorama/Kirby's Tilt & Tumble 2. There was a cancelled cooking game and (based on the patent filings) a cancelled Wii Motor bike racing game (where you hold the Wiimote/nunchuck as handle bars), an American football game (with a football shell for the Wiimote!) and a horse racing simulator.

That's just what we know though, according to Dylan Cuthbert, Nintendo have a massive amount of half finished prototypes of games lying around http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-09-22-the-life-and-times-of-dylan-cuthbert-interview It's what they do. They make tons of prototypes and often don't end up using them for 10 or even 20+ years! (See the Miis. They started on the NES and ended up first appearing on Wii! Same goes for Steel Diver, starting as a DS tech demo and ending up as a 3DS retail game)
 
Return to Dreamland looks better than those games by quite a bit. They look very simple, graphically speaking. What's the point of going full 3D if your levels are basically built out of cubes? And the last one, the 2D graphics look way too simple compared to what is possible these days... as shown by games like Epic Yarn. It looks boring.
 
On the plus side though, confirmation of something I always suspected!


Yamagami: Okay. I'm incredibly pleased that we were able to achieve a Kirby game with four-person gameplay, but HAL Laboratory has really outdone themselves in a lot of details as well. For example, when your Kirby's hit points run low, the other players can help you, and the gesture for sharing HP is a kiss! That's so cute it's unbearable! I hope everyone will play with their friends and have their characters kiss each other. Everyone will immediately fall for the game the first time they see how cute that is! (laughs)

So they DO kiss when sharing health! I sure hope that you don't see anyone sharing with King DeDeDe...

NO THEY ARE NOT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PgOR6HciUuo
 
SilverLunar said:

LOL!!! US Kirby is too hardcore for kissing!

Ugh! I have to wait till next month to get this game and Mass Attack. The wait is killing me...

Baconbitz said:
So which one is the GCN one? The first I assume?

The 1st one is the illustrious "Kirby GCN", but the 2nd one is a GCN game as well (notice how it's 4x3?)

The last one is 16x9 so it must've been a Wii game.
 

Baconbitz

Banned
Nuclear Muffin said:
LOL!!! US Kirby is too hardcore for kissing!

Ugh! I have to wait till next month to get this game and Mass Attack. The wait is killing me...



The 1st one is the illustrious "Kirby GCN", but the 2nd one is a GCN game as well (notice how it's 4x3?)

The last one is 16x9 so it must've been a Wii game.
No, I mean the one we've seen screens and a trail or for.
 

deleted

Member
That's the first one. Based on the Melee engine.

I would have loved to play the 3D one. For some reason it reminds me of Mario 64. It would have been quite interesting to explore the world with Kirby's float and copy abilities.
Also I want another adventure oriented platformer from Nintendo. But since they show us some screens, it most likely means, that we will never hear from them again.
 
Man, I waited so longingly for Kirby GCN. I still wish it was the one that'd come out... all of the character variety of Super Star in a four-player co-op package, with what looks like some of the creative worlds of Crystal Shards. Ah...

Well, regardless, I'm glad that we still get Return to Dreamland.
 

@MUWANdo

Banned
Heavy said:
The 3D Kirby looks great. I'm getting an SRPG/Puzzle feel with the grid and it jives with the "extremely challenging gameplay" quote.

Uh, I don't think that's a grid, just a tiled/bricked platform.
 

EvilMario

Will QA for food.
For those longing for the third Kirby game.

Iwata said:
Something else Miyamoto-san says, is "A game gets better the second time you make it." I feel like the previous games live on in this one. The third lost game was painfully close to completion, so I didn't want it to end there. This time, the fourth time, the structure has changed, but the third game's output is at work in it.
 

Celsior

Member
Well that explains what happened, so I assume when they showed kirby GC it was almost done but they thought it sucked so they used the accuse of moving it to the Wii to delay it. Then two more versions were canceled which lead us to 2011.

To be honest I thought they should made this 4 player coop online and made it a launch title for Wii U.
 

manueldelalas

Time Traveler
Would love to see that 3D Kirby in action; I think the 3DS could be a suitable platform for it, making it a 2D/3D hybrid like Super Mario 3D Land.
 

ZAK

Member
Yamagami: Then I tapped Hattori-san, who's good at lining up parts.
main3.jpg

Hattori: I was a little scared at first. I thought, "I'll pull an all-nighter with everyone to get myself fired up!"
 

rpmurphy

Member
Super abilities apparently existed in the third one. Kirby Returns is rather kind of a melding of the first and third game, not sure where the second one comes in.
 
ZAK said:
Yamagami: Then I tapped Hattori-san, who's good at lining up parts.

Hattori: I was a little scared at first. I thought, "I'll pull an all-nighter with everyone to get myself fired up!"
I see I wasn't the only one...

rpmurphy said:
Super abilities apparently existed in the third one. Kirby Returns is rather kind of a melding of the first and third game, not sure where the second one comes in.
Probably nothing, and by the way they talk about it, it probably wasn't all that great.
 
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