Kirby's Three Cancelled Console Games (2000-2011)

On October 24, 2011, the game Kirby's Return to Dream Land, was released on the Wii. This game was interestingly enough was a pure victim to Development Hell. Development Hell is when a game is first put into development, and they have to keep changing concepts, several areas, or anything about the game that it simply couldn't handle. Sometimes, games even got cancelled because of it. Some prime examples of Development Hell is the video game Duke Nukem Forever, which had a Development Cycle of 15 Years before being released! However, unlike Duke Nukem, Kirby's Return to Dream Land actually had a slightly shorter development span of 11 Years. The game began development immediately after the release of the 2000 Nintendo 64 title, Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards.

The First Beta Version


The First Beta was announced at E3 2005 for the Nintendo Gamecube. According to the footage that was released, it appears to play similarly like Kirby 64. By having a 3D environment while being only limited to a horizontal path. It also originally had Four Player Co-op, where in the style of Kirby Super Star, after Kirby gains a Copy Ability, he can either summon the enemy that had said Copy Ability by pressing an undistinguished button on the controller, or a second, third, or fourth player could join in by gaining the Copy Ability that Kirby currently has. It also would've marked the first appearance of the Water Copy Ability which did eventually make it's way into Kirby's Return to Dream Land. However, the reason why the game got canned was because of difficulty with Four-Player Programming.

The Second & Third Beta Versions, and The Final Outcome
However, a Kirby game called Hoshi no Kābī (translated from Japanese to Kirby of the Stars) did appear on a list of upcoming Wii games set for release in Japan in 2006, and also frequently appeared, and dissapeared on/from other game lists as well. Then, Matt Casamassina of IGN furthered the idea of it appearing on the Wii stating it would be announced, and indeed be released on said console in 2007. However, even though it wasn't announced at E3 2007, Beth Llewelyn of Nintendo of America did confirm that the project had not been abandoned. Back onto the other two beta versions, the Second Beta of the game was originally going to take a more Open-World style gameplay idea which would have been a huge first for the series, but due to extremely challenging gameplay, it was scrapped. Then the Third Beta would've returned Kirby to his Side-Scrolling Roots, yet it would be in the graphical style of a Pop-Up Book, but it got cancelled for unknown reasons. Then the development team realized something. Their ideas weren't working because they were focusing too much on 4-Player Multiplayer, and now decided to strive for a 1-Player romp. And then in 2011, they finally announced, demonstrated and released Kirby's Return to Dream Land. And even though the developers now strived for a 1-Player Kirby Game, they instead were successfully able to get a 4-Player Kirby Game, while still making it feel like a 1-Player Kirby Game! It is currently unknown if the three original betas still exist. However, in a 2011 Iwata Asks topicing Kirby's Return to Dream Land (which can be found here: Click Here), three screenshots of each beta were shown, so it could be likely that the betas still exist, or if they were simply just photos of gameplay taken during development.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've been having trouble putting images on the article pages, as my Chromebook does not have a right click on the mouse for me to save it into my computer's files. So if anyone would like to, could you please put the following three links of the photos below on the slideshow to the right? I'd really appreciate it. The three screenshots shown during the 2011                                                                                                Iwata Asks topicing Kirby's Return to Dream Land
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