Nintendo can be pretty cagey about their games before they are released, which is understandable. They don’t want anyone to steal their ideas before they have a chance to release their visions first. At the very least we can all be thankful that the company is rather forthright about spilling the beans after a title launches. Heck, after The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild launched, they were very quick to show their scrapped ideas. More on that game and more in the ten entries below.
10 Conker’s Quest
Before Conker’s Bad Fur Day became a raunchy platformer it was a lot more wholesome. Rare began work on the game under the guise of Conker’s Quest on the Nintendo 64. There is a lot of footage out there and it pretty much looked like another lovely platformer in the vein of Banjo-Kazooie. Somewhere along the way though, in order to make it stand out, it was retooled to the game we know today. The jokes may not have aged as well, but at least it tried to be something different other than another cookie cutter platformer.
9 Luigi’s Mansion
At some point Nintendo was planning to implement 3D on the GameCube just like the 3DS. Their initial project was going to involve one of the system’s Launch titles, Luigi’s Mansion. Of course this didn’t happen for it, or the GameCube as a whole. Luigi’s Mansion released in 2001 so it wasn’t until the 3DS remake in 2018 that this original vision was finally fulfilled. It took seventeen years, but at least it sort of came true.
8 Resident Evil 4
It’s hard to believe Resident Evil 4 is as good as it is since it had a long and troubled development cycle. One version showed Leon in what appeared to be a ghost house while another later demo saw him being chased down by a hooked man. Both of which had nothing to do with Spain, or the Las Plagas.
A fan going by the name of ShiguWorks online actually recreated a playable demo based on early footage. This was in 2017 and unfortunately video and the link for the playable demo have been taken down now from Capcom. Although it is obvious to point out that anything uploaded once online will remain there in perpetuity...somewhere.
7 Rayman Legends
When Rayman Legends was first announced it was going to be a Wii U exclusive. Eventually it was delayed in order to launch alongside other platforms so that was already one loss for the game and Nintendo. The other was the fact that Ubisoft was making their own NFC toys like a heart shown in this pitch video. NFC of course is the chip technology found in Amiibo and this was way before those were launched. Besides the heart there was also a Rabbid and a statue of Ezio from Assassin’s Creed II.
6 The Wonderful 101
The original pitch for The Wonderful 101 was going to feature Nintendo characters like Link and Mario. It was also planned for the Wii and not Wii U as planning started back as early as 2010. Not much else is known about the project, but suffice it to say it would have changed the reaction to that game had Nintendo approved of PlatinumGames’ idea.
5 Star Fox Adventures
Star Fox Adventures also began as something completely different. In this case it was called Dinosaur Planet and was originally planned for the Nintendo 64, which like Conker, also has a lot of footage out there for it. The biggest key difference, besides not including Star Fox, or any other team members, was the fact that the damsel in distress in his version, Krystal, was going to be one of the key heroes. Talk about a downgrade for her character, right?
4 The Last Story
Hironobu Sakaguchi can be thanked for helping shepherd in Final Fantasy into the gaming landscape. He was a mainstay at Squaresoft until he eventually left primarily due to the disaster that was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
That’s why The Last Story has such a familiar name, but it was originally not going to have such a strong homage to that series in the title. It was at first called Lost World and based on concept art, there were other differences as well. The biggest change was shaping the world from high-tech sci-fi to low-fi fantasy.
3 The Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild
Breath of the Wild was a groundbreaking title and can be thanked for having the Switch sell as well as it did right from the start. However, it could have been very different. At the 2017 Game Developers Conference, Nintendo shared some scrapped ideas. Hyrule could have been invaded by aliens. Link could have rocked out with a guitar. There were even plans to have a callback to The Minish Cap where Link would get to visit mini villages. The presentation is long, but worth every second.
2 Pokémon Gold/Silver
One of the biggest stories from 2018 was not about a new game, but one that was already decades old. Someone got ahold of the Space World prototypes for Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver. Space World, just for context, was one of Nintendo’s biggest events in the 90s akin to E3. Anyway in said demos, it was found that a lot of Pokémon were scrapped. Just take a look at that art above. Hundreds of creatures later, the prototypes above still haven't become official.
1 Mother 3
Mother 3 still hasn’t been localized officially outside of Japan yet. This is unfortunate for many reasons, but the big one is that the original version, presumably, was going to be in English. The game started out on the Nintendo 64 and was codenamed EarthBound 64. Many of the characters and aspects of the game, as scene in the few available videos still out there, were later utilized in the Game Boy Advance release. It would be great to not only see that version translated, but for EarthBound/Mother to return to consoles one day as well.