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We’ve all heard the tales of Mother 64, the infamous Nintendo 64 game that was scheduled for release on Nintendo’s Disk Drive System for the Nintendo 64 that was heavily delayed and then heavily underperformed upon release. I’m sure if you’re like me, you’ve tried to soak up all of that available footage from SpaceWorld and have also read interviews discussing the game’s plot and development. Within time, Mother 64 would get new life as Mother 3 which would release on the Gameboy Advance some years later than it was originally intended, but did you know that there was also another game in the Mother series that was pitched within this time that never got past the drawing board? Today, I’ll hopefully share some fun trivia with you, that you didn’t know about.

Yasuyuki Honne was a developer and also a board member for Monolith Soft. Monolith Soft is a Nintendo-owned game studio that produced the infamous Xenoblade Chronicles and also aided in the development of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, just to briefly discuss their resume. In 2019 Honne would take to Twitter and share some screenshots and newfound information about Nintendo possibly making a game in the Mother series for the GameCube. Honne released this information to support a book that he was publishing that talked about the life of the late Satoru Iwata.

In this promotion, Honne would discuss a meeting he had with Iwata and Shigesato Itoi, the original designer involved with the mother series, about bringing the Mother franchise to the GameCube. Honne would talk about Itoi not fully being on board with the project and feeling that the project “was a little strange.” This would pretty much instantly shut down the prospect of the Mother franchise coming to the GameCube; however, Honne would share some of the concept art during this Twitter promotion and it would look like the game was based on a Claymation art style. This kind of similar art style would be used later in a Nintendo-published game, “Kirby and The Rainbow Curse,” that came out on the Wii U well over a decade after this pitch.

When people think of Ocarina of Time and a follow-up adventure for Link, most will instantly think of Majora’s Mask.  Others might think of Wind Waker, depending on what version of the timeline you are looking at. One thing that nobody thinks about however is child Link’s first adventure after defeating Ganon that was published by Scholastic in 2006 and written by Tracy West. Yeah, I’m talking about Nintendo Heroes: Link and the Portal of Doom. Most of you will have no idea what I’m talking about, but don’t worry. I’ll give you the history.  

Nintendo Heroes is a series of books that were published by Scholastics in 2006. The two titles available within this series were Mario and the Incredible Rescue and Link and the Portal of Doom. What’s odd about these books is despite being published in 2006, they both include artwork from the N64 era. Both books also contain a sticker sheet that features artwork again from the N64 era and also both books' stories go along with their N64 adventures. Link and the Portal of Doom, according to this publication, is considered to be the first adventure of child Link from Ocarina of Time completes before the events of Majora’s Mask.  

Since we have covered where the books come from and how odd the marketing is, let’s focus solely on Link and the Portal of Doom.  The story begins with Link walking through Hyrule Field when a farmer tells him that a lot of Cuccos have gone missing and the villagers believe it to be wolves eating them. When Link arrives at the forest, he discovers that the Cuccos are actually being sucked into a portal.  

The portal then begins trying to pull Link into it and Link is barely able to escape. Link is concerned that the portal will soon take over Hyrule. Link just happens to stumble upon a map carved into a cave and isn’t able to translate it. That is until Kaepora Gaebora shows up and translates it. The map has five musical notes also carved into it and Link decides that he must find the five notes in order to learn the song.  

The rest of the book focuses on Link journeying throughout Hyrule and collecting the notes. Throughout the book, a vast amount of characters and places from the Ocarina of Time version of Hyrule are highlighted. The climax of the book is almost painfully underwhelming, even for a children’s book. The book does provide a unique perspective for Link and getting his thoughts on the journey is similar to reading the Zelda manga. It isn’t much, but again, it’s nice.  

Nintendo wouldn’t really publish any storybooks like these again. They had done it previously in the early 90s with the Nintendo Adventure Series which also featured two Zelda titles in that series of books. They also had the Gameboy series of book publications in the early 2000s that were also published by Scholastics. The Gameboy Series of Scholastic books would also feature two Zelda titles as well; however, these two publications were simply retellings of the Zelda Oracle games.  

If you’re interested in Link and the Portal of Doom and want to read the full story, here is a link...............to the Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/Link-Portal-Doom-Nintendo-Heroes/dp/0439843642

Ever since the release of Pokémon, there’s always been an expanded version to follow up the mainline games of that generation. For Red and Blue, there was Yellow. For Gold and Silver, you get Crystal. Ruby and Sapphire came and went and Emerald saved generation 3. And lastly, with Pearl and Diamond, you get the definitive way to play Generation 4 with Platinum.  

Then, in 2011 Pokémon Black and White are released upon the world. Possibly the most controversial generation in the history of Pokémon. This was due to the regional Pokedex only consisting of Pokémon found in the Unova region and classic Pokémon from the previous generations being tied down to the post-game. With this glaring omission of classic Pokémon being restricted to the post-game, fans were hopeful that a Pokémon: Gray would come along and fix the regional Pokedex.  

In late 2011, it seemed hopeful that this Pokémon Gray would come along and fix the biggest problem people had with Generation5. In October of 2011, IGN would report that the domain name pokemongray.com had been registered by the Melbourne IT Digital Brand Services.  It seemed with the pattern of previous generations that Pokémon Gray was inevitable. Then, things went silent.  

Nothing would be heard about the enhanced version of Generation 5 until February of 2012. On February 26th, 2012 during the Japanese TV program Pokémon Smash! The games were revealed during a preview. Within a few moments, the games were followed by an international confirmation on the front page of the official Pokémon website. It would later be revealed that these new games wouldn’t be “third versions” of games like fans were used to, but instead, these games were going to be direct sequels to the Black and White games.  

In September of 2017 during an interview with Game Informer, Game Freak co-founder Junichi Masuda would be asked about Pokémon Gray and why the direct sequels were developed as opposed to the third version of games that fans were used to. Masuda would respond with the following;  

“A lot of people were expecting Pokémon Gray at the time, but the concept of Black and White was kind of these opposing forces – a yin-yang kind of thing. If we went with Gray, it would have moved away from that concept so we decided to keep the titles there.”

After the release of the direct sequels, the third version of a Pokémon Generation would ever happen despite such infamous rumors of Pokémon Z and Pokémon Stars. The closest fans have gotten were the Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra bundles that came with recent copies of Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield.  

Sweet Bit Gaming: That One Time Nintendo Made a DK TCG.

Sometimes certain pieces of merchandise are victims of the forgetful mind. One piece of merchandise I’ve found recently was a trading card game that came out back in 1999. Think about it, a trading card game in 1999. Pokémon was dominating, Digimon was around the corner, and Donkey Kong was entering the TCG arena….wait Donkey Kong? Yes, today I want to share with you the very brief history of the Donkey Kong TCG that was only released back in 1999.

On November 30th, 1999, IGN would post that Nintendo was releasing a Donkey Kong Card Game in Japan. The card game was published by Nintendo and Ahomaro Games. The card game was set to tie in with the upcoming release of Donkey Kong 64. The set of cards consisted of 252 total cards which broke down to 72-character cards, 144 “skills” cards, and 36 support cards. The cards featured a gameplay style loosely based on rock, paper, scissors as the cards have different power ratings simply listed as Power, Hand, and Speed.

The cards were set to release on December 10th, 1999, in Japan. The cards would be sold in a booster pack, featuring either Chunky or Donkey Kong artwork or a 60 card Starter Pack. The IGN article would also show off some of the artworks for the different card types and then would end with a message stating that Nintendo has not yet announced whether the DK Card Game will make its way to the US. Obviously, these cards never made it to us.

A quick Google search of these cards will mostly give you links to the old Topps set of Donkey Kong cards that were released back in the 80s. Further research will show you that the IGN article is almost the only information available on these cards. Finally, we have something more obscure than the Kid Icarus AR Cards. The card game at least had its own website.

In regard to the pack, the first booster pack as the website calls it, features Donkey Kong on the front and has a chance of any card in the set to be available within the pack. The 2nd booster pack, as the website calls it, features Chunky Kong on the artwork and is always guaranteed to include the Chunky Kong and Critter character cards in every pack. So, there is a rare 3rd pack of the booster packs known as the DK64 pack. This pack featured a unique white artwork with more than one Kong on the cover and was sold at the Nintendo Space World 2000 event. This third booster pack was set to contain 72 new illustrations for cards in the set. This pack release was the last bit of news to be featured on the website for the card game. It should be noted that the card game did have a very minor tournament scene and seemed to coexist with some Nintendo video game tournaments that were held during the release of the card game.

Wind Waker 2 was first teased in March of 2004 during a Game Developers Conference entitled “The Evolution of a Franchise: The Legend of Zelda. Eiji Aonuma confirmed the sequel in a timeline picture showing “Wind Waker 2” is being set for a 2xxx release. IGN would report on this and mention several times that a 2004 release was possible for the game. Eiji Aonuma would mention during this conference that more information about the Wind Waker 2 would be revealed at the upcoming e3 event.  

E3 2004 would come, and a new trailer would be unveiled; however, it wasn’t a trailer for the Wind Waker 2, instead, it was for a more realistic Zelda game similar to Ocarina of Time.  The trailer seemed to fit the same tone of the Zelda Space World 2000 demo video which featured Link going one on one with Ganondorf in a sword battle. Fan reaction was electric to say the least as Miyamoto came out on stage carrying a replica of the Master Sword and Hylian Shield; however, where was the sea? Where was the King of Red Lions? Where was Toon Link? Well to put it simply, they were gone now.  

During a presentation during GDC, Aonuma would speak about what exactly happened to Wind Waker 2. Here’s an excerpt from that presentation “Let me backtrack a little. As I was busy working on the connectivity project, it wasn’t as though the Wind Waker 2 project that I spoke of earlier came to a halt. Not at all. As some of you know, at E3 2004, we unveiled the game that would become Twilight Princess, the realistic Zelda game, and we announced that it was developed by the team that had been developing Wind Waker 2. Actually, there was a reason that that decision was made at the time. At one point, I had heard that even Wind Waker, which had reached the million mark in sales, had become sluggish in North America, where the market was much healthier than in Japan. I asked NOA why this was. What I was told was that the toon-shading technique was, in fact, giving the impression that this Zelda was for a younger audience and that, for this reason, it alienated the upper teen audience that had represented the typical Zelda player. Having heard that, I began to worry about whether Wind Waker 2, which used a similar presentation, was something that would actually sell. In addition, because we knew how difficult it would be to create an innovative way of playing using existing GameCube hardware, we knew what a challenge it would be to develop something that would do well in the Japanese market, where gamer drift was happening.

That’s when I decided that if we didn’t have an effective and immediate solution, the only thing we could do was to give the healthy North American market the Zelda that they wanted. So, at the end of 2003, I went to Miyamoto and said, “I want to make a realistic Zelda." Miyamoto was skeptical at first. I was so focused on changing the look of the game as being the solution we were looking for without coming up with a breakthrough game idea, and he advised me that “If you really want to make a realistic Zelda, you should start by doing what you couldn’t in the Ocarina of Time. Make it so that Link can attack enemies while riding on his horse using the Wind Waker engine, and make your decision based on how that feels." This is something that went against everything that the staff had been working on and I expected to come as quite a shock to the team. Surprisingly, my entire staff was enthusiastic about this change, and the project on which progress had slowed was given a much-needed jumpstart.

Four months later, development had progressed to a point where Link could swing his sword in battle against enemies while riding on his horse in a realistic looking environment. When it was announced as a surprise trailer at the 2004 E3, it received a standing ovation by the media audience. This was a very exciting moment for us, but we were still very much in the early stages of converting the game into something more realistic. We knew that we had to create a Zelda game that would live up to expectations of fans in North America, and that if we didn’t, it could mean the end of the franchise. But I also trusted the ability of the team, which was able to bring the game so far in just four short months, and Miyamoto and I announced that this Zelda would be released in the fall of 2005.”

So, the project was canceled and was converted into Twilight Princess. Toon Link would continue his adventures on the Nintendo DS hardware and things would be at peace. However, it would be revealed many years later that a group of game developers was working on pitching a version of Wind Waker for the Gameboy Advance. David Soliani, developer of Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle, another Nintendo game using first-party characters revealed in a Twitter post back in 2017 revealed that back in 2003 he and a fellow colleague were close to getting a demo version of Wind Waker on Gameboy Advance by their manager. The colleague mentioned was Fabio Pagetti. This is what Soliani had to say about the project "Long time ago, I guess it was the 2003, me and Fabio Pagetti (the artist who made the pixel art below) almost convinced our managing director to let us produce a demo for a GBA version of Wind Waker. No luck that time, but it was running nicely. We were dreamers,"