Kirby Warp Star
Image: Nintendo

Not many of Nintendo's big franchises skipped the GameCube, but Kirby is one of them. Sort of. Outside of the racing game Kirby Air Ride, the pink puffball didn't get his own mainline game. But Nintendo had intentions to give Kirby his own platformer on the purple lunchbox.

Known simply as Kirby for Nintendo GameCube, the title was announced in 2004 — a year after he'd finished racing on warp stars. The late Satoru Iwata revealed in an interview around the time that Kirby's Return to Dream Land launched that HAL Laboratory had been working on a new Kirby game since 2000, after Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards came out. You can read the interview, which covers three canned Kirby projects, over on Nintendo's website here.

Today, Twitter account @ObscureKirby has shared some newfound footage of the lost Kirby game. Uploaded onto YouTube by Foulowe56 — who also discovered some other footage from the game back in January — the 9-second clip shows off some typical Kirby power-ups along with some fancy camera angles and unusual-looking levels. The short footage is a little blurry, but it's a hell of a find.

The cancelled project looks to be a mix of 2.5D and 3D environments, similar to Kirby 64. One level looks like it's set in some ruins, another in space (it actually looks a little like the sky of Final Destination from Smash Bros. Melee), and something that looks like a waterway. There also seem to be enemies stacking up and helping Kirby out, which would later be used in Kirby Star Allies. It's a fascinating and important discovery, but also a sad one because this looks amazing.

What do you think of the footage? Let us know down below!

[source twitter.com]