Discussion Nintendo games that took the longest to get released

[electricmastro]

Just for fun, tried making a list of the Nintendo games (whether developed or published by them) that were delayed for the longest (or took the longest to surface in other words), but still ended up getting an official release, based on the time between development starts/first announcements and official releases.

Here’s what I’ve found so far:

Star Fox 2 - 24 years

Metroid Dread - 16 years

Mother 3 - 12 years

Kirby's Return to Dream Land - 11 years

Pikmin 4 - 8 years

Kirby Air Ride - 8 years

Pokémon Red and Green - 6 years

 

[Famicrono]

I dont think the first two really apply.
I would add Zelda BotW (not much but very impactful) and Metroid Prime 4.

 

[CyberWolfBia]

Eeeh.. I don't know if I'd count stuff like Star Fox 2 and MOTHER 3, which were previously cancelled, until they were properly announced again.

Kirby Air Ride sure, it vanished up until it resurfaced as a GameCube title;

Pikmin 4 or Metroid Dread were never formally announced for that long though.

 

[Neverx]

Prime 4 is the only one that really counts, Dread is not the same Dread of 16 years ago. Also it's kind crazy just how long Prime 4 has taken lol.

 

[electricmastro]

Metroid Dread were never formally announced for that long though.

Metroid Dread I understand was in development as far back as 2005, when it was envisioned for the DS. It was also announced for a 2006 release in Official Nintendo Magazine.

 

[Brock Reiher]

Metroid Dread I understand was in development as far back as 2005, when it was envisioned for the DS. It was also announced for a 2006 release in Official Nintendo Magazine.

That was a different game. The Dread we got was started development shortly before release and just used the old code name for clout more or less.

 

[electricmastro]

That was a different game. The Dread we got was started development shortly before release and just used the old code name for clout more or less.

Hmm, how I should rename the thread and still include Metroid Dread then

 

[Stilt Village]

Return to Dream Land is also a completely different game from the one announced for GameCube. It happened to reuse music and some other ideas, as often happens with cancelled games, but beyond being a console Kirby game with four player co-op there is no real shared premise between the two projects. It was in fact only the first of three very different Kirby games cancelled in the 2000's!

 

[Famicrono]

Return to Dream Land is also a completely different game from the one announced for GameCube. It happened to reuse music and some other ideas, as often happens with cancelled games, but beyond being a console Kirby game with four player co-op there is no real shared premise between the two projects. It was in fact only the first of three very different Kirby games cancelled in the 2000's!

Wait really?
What are these other 2 ones?

 

[electricmastro]

Return to Dream Land is also a completely different game from the one announced for GameCube.

I personally don't think that matters here. Either the development history is relevant to a game, or it isn't. As far as I'm concerned, that history you listed is relevant to Kirby's Return to Dreamland, in my view. Simple as that. lol

 

[Stopdoor]

I dont think the first two really apply.
I would add Zelda BotW (not much but very impactful) and Metroid Prime 4.

Prime 4 is the only one that really counts, Dread is not the same Dread of 16 years ago. Also it's kind crazy just how long Prime 4 has taken lol.

Return to Dream Land is also a completely different game from the one announced for GameCube. It happened to reuse music and some other ideas, as often happens with cancelled games, but beyond being a console Kirby game with four player co-op there is no real shared premise between the two projects. It was in fact only the first of three very different Kirby games cancelled in the 2000's!

The latter two posts raise a worthy dispute of "not being the same game", but I think that makes the first case of Star Fox 2 being pretty much the exact game that was going to release at the time more valid a "delay", lol.

 

[kirbyfan407]

Return to Dream Land is also a completely different game from the one announced for GameCube. It happened to reuse music and some other ideas, as often happens with cancelled games, but beyond being a console Kirby game with four player co-op there is no real shared premise between the two projects. It was in fact only the first of three very different Kirby games cancelled in the 2000's!

I'm pretty sure only the game depicted in the first screenshot was made public back when it was in development, but that third one is so pretty that I retroactively wanted it when I learned about it. I was so eagerly awaiting that GameCube game, but it never came. And then when Return to Dream Land released, I didn't love it. Thankfully, Return to Dream Land Deluxe made me change my mind.

Wait really?
What are these other 2 ones?

Cancelled projects revealed in an Iwata Asks about Return to Dream Land.

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.

 

[electricmastro]

The latter two posts raise a worthy dispute of "not being the same game", but I think that makes the first case of Star Fox 2 being pretty much the exact game that was going to release at the time more valid a "delay", lol.

Yeah, and arguably Pokemon in 1995 wasn't the same as it was in 1990 while it was being developed. If that standard will be used against this thread, then we might as well end the thread now. lol

 

[Hailinel]

Metroid Dread I understand was in development as far back as 2005, when it was envisioned for the DS. It was also announced for a 2006 release in Official Nintendo Magazine.

That's not really a delay. That's scrapping a project and then starting it again years later under completely different circumstances.

 

[Wockio]

Yeah, and arguably Pokemon in 1995 wasn't the same as it was in 1990 while it was being developed. If that standard will be used against this thread, then we might as well end the thread now. lol

That was in development for five years straight, whereas Dread had some concepts made for it, likely some prototypes too, only to be paused and effectively cancelled until a completely different group of people picked up the basic premise for what is an entirely new project in all but name, over a decade later. Either way I think it still applies as a honorable mention.

TotK is one I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned yet. Likely started development some time in 2018, announced in 2019, planned for release in Holiday 2021(?), delayed to Holiday 2022 because of pandemic, further delayed one last time to May 2023 for polishing and QA.

 

[electricmastro]

That was in development for five years straight, whereas Dread had some concepts made for it, likely some prototypes too, only to be paused and effectively cancelled until a completely different group of people picked up the basic premise for what is an entirely new project in all but name, over a decade later. Either way I think it still applies as a honorable mention.

Well as I'm the one who started the thread, I'll leave it up if only for encouraging more good discussion like this. I don't claim for Dread to be the exact same case as Pokemon Red and Green, but find it justifiable enough to group them together under this topic even if others necessarily wouldn't. And that's not such a bad thing, right?

 

[Yamanoi]

Metroid Prime 4 for sure as @Neverx said.

That was a different game. The Dread we got was started development shortly before release and just used the old code name for clout more or less.

I would've been angry if a game in development since 2005 finally released and was only 3 hours long...

 

[JazzyFuture]

Still holding out hope for Zero Racers! Surely they'll still release this finished F-Zero spinoff that was planned for 1996.

Who am I kidding, they never even rereleased the commercially available Virtual Boy games.

 

[JazzyFuture]

I would've been angry if a game in development since 2005 finally released and was only 3 hours long...

Good thing it was closer to 8 or 12 casually then.

 

[Stopdoor]

Prime 4 is the only one that really counts, Dread is not the same Dread of 16 years ago. Also it's kind crazy just how long Prime 4 has taken lol.

Metroid Prime 4 for sure as @Neverx said.

Actually going back to the Dread example, we even explicitly know Prime 4's development was rebooted and restarted with a whole different dev so it's not actually that wild?

 

[Mer.Saloon]

[1] Time is relative, and at the time of the N64 it'd have been Ocarina of Time. OOT begun development concurrently with Mario 64 in 95 and was being aimed to launch in time for the release of the N64DD. Though the shift from the DD, as well as there being many cooks in the kitchen caused it to not be released until 98.

A 3 year gap back in those days was pretty significant, especially in the days of the N64. Amazing how Breath of the wild would come to overtake that considering development began immediately after Skyward Sword.

 

[Nabbit]

I think Pikmin 4 reasonably counts. Miyamoto-san's announcement makes it an edge case but it was definitely more than a rumor, despite how much confusion it caused.

I'm really surprised it was only 2 years from announcement to release for The Wind Waker and from Dinosaur Planet's announcement to the release of Star Fox Adventures. I'd have thought those would've been much longer, they felt incredibly long at the time but probably because of what @Mer.Saloon mentioned above as well as time going by more slowly for me because I was a teen at the time.

 

[Djehuty]

How long it took for jn development games to surface there’s a good title.

Ik what the others mean but in this case it’s a bit um akshaully, it’s nice to see it laid out like this.

Either way if they started as the same project or not what they became is what matters.

 

[electricmastro]

[1] Time is relative, and at the time of the N64 it'd have been Ocarina of Time. OOT begun development concurrently with Mario 64 in 95 and was being aimed to launch in time for the release of the N64DD. Though the shift from the DD, as well as there being many cooks in the kitchen caused it to not be released until 98.

A 3 year gap back in those days was pretty significant, especially in the days of the N64. Amazing how Breath of the wild would come to overtake that considering development began immediately after Skyward Sword.

I suppose I’ll focus on that then. What would you say is an ideal amount of time to develop a game, if any?

 

[electricmastro]

How long it took for jn development games to surface there’s a good title.

Ik what the others mean but in this case it’s a bit um akshaully, it’s nice to see it laid out like this.

Either way if they started as the same project or not what they became is what matters.

You prob summed it up better than I was getting at. lol

For example, I know Mother 3 on N64 doesn’t look the same as Mother 3 on GBA, but both cases are still relevant to each other in its overall development.

 

[Hailinel]

I suppose I’ll focus on that then. What would you say is an ideal amount of time to develop a game, if any?

The ideal is "enough time to finish the game in a quality state," but how long that is and whether the time is used effectively will always play into that. Duke Nukem Forever is a middling game in its best moments and insultingly awful the rest of the time, yet took 14 years to make. And during those 14 years, the game's development was perpetually mismanaged until 3D Realms ran out of money and it had to be finished with Gearbox's assistance.

 

[Mer.Saloon]

I suppose I’ll focus on that then. What would you say is an ideal amount of time to develop a game, if any?

I think it's best to judge development by the standards of their generation of consoles. In the Atari days, a few months was enough to get something decent out. By the NES, those months could extend to a year. These days, big games taking 4+ years seems to be the standard.

 

[electricmastro]

I think it's best to judge development by the standards of their generation of consoles. In the Atari game, a few months was enough to get something decent out. By the NES, those months could extend to a year. These days, big games taking 4+ years seems to be the standard.

Hm, I had figured 2-4 years was an ideal length for the average big game in an industry built on schedules and paying people by the hour.

 

[KarmaDesires]

Do tech demos that turned into full games later count?

 

[Hailinel]

Hm, I had figured 2-4 years was an ideal length for the average big game in an industry built on schedules and paying people by the hour.

Most positions in big title development are salaried.

 

[Zeal543]

Prime 4, Pikmin 3 was also a longer wait than 4

That was a different game. The Dread we got was started development shortly before release and just used the old code name for clout more or less.

This is true but I think that applies to most games that take a long time to come out; e.g. Prime 4 rebooted mid-late 2018

 

[Triistan]

Donkey Kong Racing announced for GC (2001) became(?) DK Barrel blast for Wii (2007)

 

[Stilt Village]

Donkey Kong Racing announced for GC (2001) became(?) DK Barrel blast for Wii (2007)

It did not. Donkey Kong Racing became Sabreman Stampede for the 360, which was eventually cancelled in 2005 after Rare and Microsoft couldn't agree on a direction and the team spent years running into issues and making no real progress.



Barrel Blast might have originally been a GameCube game though. That it was supposed to use the bongos is in the second paragraph of its Wikipedia article even, but the section on its development in Mario Wiki's article implies it was always planned for Wii, so that might just be one of those made-up things that got repeated as fact for long enough.

 

[Jbone916]

Can’t wait for the next Kid Icarus title to join this list in 2032!

 

[electricmastro]

It did not. Donkey Kong Racing became Sabreman Stampede for the 360, which was eventually cancelled in 2005 after Rare and Microsoft couldn't agree on a direction and the team spent years running into issues and making no real progress.



Barrel Blast might have originally been a GameCube game though. That it was supposed to use the bongos is in the second paragraph of its Wikipedia article even, but the section on its development in Mario Wiki's article implies it was always planned for Wii, so that might just be one of those made-up things that got repeated as fact for long enough.

If Racing's development isn't relevant to Barrel Blast, then yeah, it doesn't count. lol

 

[Stopdoor]

It did not. Donkey Kong Racing became Sabreman Stampede for the 360, which was eventually cancelled in 2005 after Rare and Microsoft couldn't agree on a direction and the team spent years running into issues and making no real progress.



Barrel Blast might have originally been a GameCube game though. That it was supposed to use the bongos is in the second paragraph of its Wikipedia article even, but the section on its development in Mario Wiki's article implies it was always planned for Wii, so that might just be one of those made-up things that got repeated as fact for long enough.

I have strong memories of seeing it in Nintendo Power referenced as GameCube title alongside Super Paper Mario, I might attempt to dig that up myself to check

 

[Stopdoor]

It did not. Donkey Kong Racing became Sabreman Stampede for the 360, which was eventually cancelled in 2005 after Rare and Microsoft couldn't agree on a direction and the team spent years running into issues and making no real progress.



Barrel Blast might have originally been a GameCube game though. That it was supposed to use the bongos is in the second paragraph of its Wikipedia article even, but the section on its development in Mario Wiki's article implies it was always planned for Wii, so that might just be one of those made-up things that got repeated as fact for long enough.

I have strong memories of seeing it in Nintendo Power referenced as GameCube title alongside Super Paper Mario, I might attempt to dig that up myself to check

found it, Nintendo Power Issue 205 July 2006, this is where they added "DK Bongo Blast" and Super Paper Mario to their "Forecast". The bongo drums being visible in the screenshot makes it seem pretty conclusive it was seriously planned to use the bongos.

Feel free to attempt to cite this on wikis lol

 

[NintenDuvo]

oh wow Super Paper Mario was originally supposed to be a Gamecube game, never knew that

 

[Triistan]

It did not. Donkey Kong Racing became Sabreman Stampede for the 360, which was eventually cancelled in 2005 after Rare and Microsoft couldn't agree on a direction and the team spent years running into issues and making no real progress.



Barrel Blast might have originally been a GameCube game though. That it was supposed to use the bongos is in the second paragraph of its Wikipedia article even, but the section on its development in Mario Wiki's article implies it was always planned for Wii, so that might just be one of those made-up things that got repeated as fact for long enough.

I have strong memories of seeing it in Nintendo Power referenced as GameCube title alongside Super Paper Mario, I might attempt to dig that up myself to check

found it, Nintendo Power Issue 205 July 2006, this is where they added "DK Bongo Blast" and Super Paper Mario to their "Forecast". The bongo drums being visible in the screenshot makes it seem pretty conclusive it was seriously planned to use the bongos.

Feel free to attempt to cite this on wikis lol

Yeah, I’ve the italian official Nintendo magazine with the same info, it should have been the last game with bongo support.

 

[Tangerine_Cookie]

Do tech demos that turned into full games later count?

Steel Diver. From pre-release tech demo for the DS to 3DS launch game.

It's also a game about submarines, which makes it taking long to surface very funny.

 

[RoyalGoldenFES]

EarthBound Beginnings/Mother 1 was supposed to get a North American release (and was even fully localized) back in 1990/1991, but wound up getting shelved likely in part due to the release of the SNES.

While a version of it surfaced online in the early 2000’s (known as EarthBound Zero), it wouldn’t get an official Western release at all until 2015 on the Wii U Virtual Console.

 

[Marce-chan]

In officially announced games that didn't get cancelled and later started development as a complete different game(Metroid Dread), I think it'd be Metroid Prime 4. It was officially announced in 2017, listed in every investors briefings with a TBD on it ever since, and even tho it was rebooted and restarted with Retro by late 2018, it's not like Dread being prototyped and designed for DS, then 10 years later starting development as a Switch game.

Pikmin 4 did have Miyamoto casually bring it up on an interview and Nintendo confirming it was in development exactly 8 years before release, even tho the version we got probably started development by 2018 or 2019.

 

[Marce-chan]

[1] Time is relative, and at the time of the N64 it'd have been Ocarina of Time. OOT begun development concurrently with Mario 64 in 95 and was being aimed to launch in time for the release of the N64DD. Though the shift from the DD, as well as there being many cooks in the kitchen caused it to not be released until 98.

A 3 year gap back in those days was pretty significant, especially in the days of the N64. Amazing how Breath of the wild would come to overtake that considering development began immediately after Skyward Sword.

Actually it only started development in January 2013, as Fujiybayashi said on the documentary series.

Tears of the Kingdom tho probably entered development shortly after BotW which is wild. And that one had almost 4 years from reveal to release.

BotW had four years and 2 months considering the "changing the conventions" announcement on the January Wii U Direct.

Well I guess if we're considering interviews, Super Mario Odyssey was casually confirmed to be in development on a interview in April 2014.

 

[Djehuty]

Can’t wait for the next Kid Icarus title to join this list in 2032!

That means they had to have announced or been working on one in the first place.

 

[Djehuty]

Actually it only started development in January 2013, as Fujiybayashi said on the documentary series.

Tears of the Kingdom tho probably entered development shortly after BotW which is wild. And that one had almost 4 years from reveal to release.

BotW had four years and 2 months considering the "changing the conventions" announcement on the January Wii U Direct.

Well I guess if we're considering interviews, Super Mario Odyssey was casually confirmed to be in development on an interview in April 2014.

Considering totk started as the dlc process it probably wasn’t right after botw but a continues dev cycle with 0 stops

 

[Jbone916]

That means they had to have announced or been working on one in the first place.

Spoiler

Theres a joke at the end of Kid Icarus Uprising that there won’t be another Kid Icarus game for 20 more years.

 

[SMD]

oh wow Super Paper Mario was originally supposed to be a Gamecube game, never knew that

yep

 

[N75]

Sakurai confirmed that the cancelled Air Ride for N64 and the one he worked on were two different projects. Not sure why HAL/Nintendo decided to reuse the name though.

 

[Hailinel]

Sakurai confirmed that the cancelled Air Ride for N64 and the one he worked on were two different projects. Not sure why HAL/Nintendo decided to reuse the name though.

If it was already trademarked, might as well.

 

[electricmastro]

So is Star Fox 2 still generally agreed to be the Nintendo game that took the longest to get released?