Kid Kirby [SNES – Cancelled]

Kid Kirby [SNES – Cancelled]

Kid Kirby was meant to be a “prequel” of the series, a platform game with a younger Kirby (with hair?) that was in development at DMA Design, the makers of Uniracers, Silicon Valley and Lemmings. A little image from this game was already seen in an old magazine, but only recently we found more concepts from the project, thanks to a flickr account from an ex-DMA developer. From an article on Gamasutra we read that Kid Kirby “was to be a showcase for the SNES mouse, but the mouse did not sell that well and the game was not great when played with a joypad, so it never saw the light of day”.

Additional Kid Kirby renders were discovered on a 1995 Nintendo Source Book binder intended for retailers. These pictures were taken by Tomato and Heidi Poe of Earthbound Central.

You can find more about the Kirby series in the WiKirby!

Images:



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monokoma




4 thoughts on “Kid Kirby [SNES – Cancelled]

  1. AdaMiSt

    Going by the sprites I would say that it’s likely this concept evolved into Kirby Tilt N’ Tumble.

    The main difference being that it seems you would “flick” Kirby around the levels with the mouse. I can imagine this sort of thing being on the DS quite easily.

    Mind you this is just going by what little sprites and maps we have here.

  2. Ray

    This page is pretty ancient to be commenting on but I came across some information which might be of interest. Background: I’m a Kirby fan but I had never heard of this game until today. I work with someone who is ex-DMA staff and we got talking about this game after they saw me watching a Youtube video of Kirby’s Dream Course.

    I’m not sure if this is new info or not – I googled around and couldn’t find anywhere talking about gameplay, so here it is just in case.

    He told me you would basically use the mouse as a slingshot to fire Kirby across the level to the end. He described it as “kind of golf-like but a 2D platformer.”

    Take this with a pinch of salt as it was a long time ago and he said he only seen it running quite briefly, but interesting nonetheless!

    1. Mike

      Your source is absolutely right! I worked on Kid Kirby as a tester for a while, and that’s exactly what it was like. You clicked on Kirby and stretched him, then let go to ping him around the level.

      You could also slap him while he’s in the air to help him reach higher platforms. You only had 2 or 3 slaps per ping though.

      1. monokoma Post author

        Thanks a lot for your confirmation Mike! It’s always great to read memories from people who worked on cancelled games, these details are mostly lost and forgotten

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