Exclusive: Major Nintendo Studio Pitched Kid Icarus Game In 2007 (Patreon)

If you've seen my video delving into the hidden history behind Factor 5's Kid Icarus pitch , you will already know that Nintendo was trying to revive Kid Icarus for a number of years before the announcement of Kid Icarus Uprising on 3DS. It's still a subject that fascinates me a lot and I will ocassionally revisit it, discussing it with various former and current Nintendo employees when the opportunity presents itself.

Recently, I was speaking to a former member of Retro Studios who was able to corroborate a tip I had gotten elsewhere and to my surprise, it turned out to be true. Around the time that Factor 5 was getting their pitch off the ground in 2007, Retro Studios was, indeed, wanting to do a Kid Icarus game for Wii.

The proposal was worked on by a team of only a few people, headed by Jason Behr, the lead level designer on the original Metroid Prime trilogy.  Behr suggested that they would move onto this new Kid Icarus once development on Metroid Prime 3: Corruption was completed.

Behr's pitch was shortlived and was declined for fairly simple reasons. Its central premise was to bring back Kid Icarus for the modern day. To a fan, that might make sense, but the sentiment of such a suggestion didn't go down well with Nintendo's higher ups. It was putting the IP first, which is something Nintendo almost always avoids. They greenlight games on the basis of their gameplay ideas, not whether or not it would be interesting or exciting to do a revival of a particular franchise. One of the defining features of Nintendo's review board (one that is commonly misunderstood) is that most of them are game designers before they are businessmen. This same logic can be applied to explain why we haven't seen a new F-Zero game in over decade, as well.

I don't yet know the specifics of Retro's proposal and I haven't yet seen any documentation from it, though I intend to reach out to the appropriate parties at some point. The odds are we will never be able to retrieve something so secretive, but it's always worth a shot.

With a bit of luck, I might be able to dig up more about this in the future. Until then, enjoy the scoop.

- Liam