I’m a big fan of Nintendo’s Kirby series. Adventure, Superstar, Crystal Shards – all unassailable classics, and by my reckoning some of the best platformers ever. But like all Kirby fans, I’ve often wondered: what of Kirby’s past? What sequence of events molded this complex character into the benign, mute sphere we know and love today? What was Kirby like… as a child?
Oh! Apparently he had a grotesque, prehensile tendril sprouting from the top of his skull. Or maybe that’s supposed to be a strand of cartoon hair. Wait a second, does this mean Kirby had to go bald at some point? Just how old is Kirby? What kind of secrets has he been hiding?!
Yeah, this a weird one. Back in ’95, Nintendo put the task of creating a Kirby prequel in the hands of developer DMA Studios. Kid Kirby was to serve as a showcase for the SNES mouse, which up to that point had only really been used for Mario Paint. However, because of the peripheral’s flagging sales (and because Mario Paint is exactly enough to merit any piece of hardware’s existence anyway), the game was canned.
Kirby’s checkered past was, alas, lost to time, and a shamefaced DMA Studios would go on to change their name and busy themselves with lesser projects like the Grand Theft Auto series.
Looking at these few pieces of leaked art, I’m transported back to a very specific time in the history of gaming, when clumsy pre-rendered models began to supplant not only in-game sprites, but the traditional illustrations that used to define a game’s marketing materials.
Granted, this wasn’t universally a bad thing; some of these games had great aesthetics that can still bear scrutiny today (Super Mario RPG, Donkey Kong Country… um… Donkey Kong Country 2). But as someone who was always inspired as much by the art of video games as the content of the games themselves, I feel like some of the spark that had drawn me the medium was extinguished. C’est la vie, Kid Kirby. C’est la vie.
Anyway, I guess I’m going to be doing this as a regular feature now, so if you know of any interesting cancelled, obscure, or otherwise forgotten titles from the heyday of classic gaming, feel free to let me know in the comments!
Leave a Reply