When people think of video games, titles made by Nintendo are typically the first to come to mind. This is because the company makes games meant to be fun and appropriate for all ages. Nintendo has also existed for a very long time, dating back to 1889 when founded by Fusajirō Yamauchi. Of course back then it wasn't video games that the company produced, but hanafuda playing cards. The first Nintendo video games weren't released until the 1970s.
The company strives to deal out winning titles as much as possible. With that in mind, Nintendo can cancel certain projects for strange reasons.
10 Super Mario RPG 2
When gamers think of a Mario RPG game, they typically think of Paper Mario (especially since there are a lot of them). However, older players who had a SNES Classic or Super Nintendo may have played Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. It was the first game where Mario participated in turn-based battles. A sequel of this game was in the works, but it got cancelled.
A popular theory is that the game was cancelled because it actually morphed into Paper Mario. However, rumors are spreading that this cancelled title could resurface for the Nintendo Switch.
9 Star Fox 2
You may have actually played this game! This sequel has a bit of a bizarre story in terms of its cancellation. It was completed and planned to be released in 1995 but was cancelled over fears that it would be graphically inferior to games from competitors due to the expansion of 3D graphics. Nintendo decided it would be better to prioritize their upcoming Nintendo 64 console (which also has an interesting development story). Due to that, the nearly complete Star Fox 2 was put away to collect dust.
It wasn't till 2017 that the game became available on the Super SNES Classic Edition and then later on the Nintendo Switch in 2019.
8 High Voltage's Unnamed IP
Nintendo commissioned the company, High Voltage, to make a new Wii U game together. All we knew about the untitled game was that is was a kid-friendly shooter with robot characters that shot water at each other. This whole partnership came crumbling down over an information leak. From what is publicly known, Nintendo wanted High Voltage to find the leaker or else the project would be cancelled.
High Voltage did an investigation but no one came forward and Nintendo ultimately decided to cancel their partnership and thus cancelling the game. To this day, many wonder whether this idea eventually turned into Splatoon.
7 Donkey Kong Racing
This title was going to be for the Nintendo GameCube and was first announced in 2001. The game was being produced by Rare Ltd., a video game company that works exclusively for Nintendo. However, Rare Ltd. was bought out by Microsoft in 2002.
So with the buyout of Rare Ltd., Donkey Kong Racing was cancelled. What the company had was reworked as Sabreman's Stampede, but that got cancelled as well.
6 Project H.A.M.M.E.R.
Developed for the Wii, this game was announced in 2006. In 2007, Nintendo confirmed that the title was put on hold. Later in 2009, its cancellation was confirmed due to some sort of creative internal conflicts at Nintendo Software Technology.
Other details are mostly left to the imagination. There are some spicy accusations from the developers that there were racism issues from the senior leads, who ignored the input for the cultural interest of the game's Western market.
5 Kirby Tilt N Tumble 2
This cute franchise has had a number of cancellations, including this sequel that was announced in 2001. Its development was a little odd. It started as a sequel to the original Kirby Tilt n' Tumble but it was later decided that the Kirby aspect should be cut. So it became Roll-o-Rama for a while before the game was entirely cancelled.
While the original Kirby Tilt n' Tumble was released on the Gameboy, this cancelled version seemed like it was planning to use both the Gameboy Advance and GameCube so there would be two screens worth of visuals that show off the connectivity feature between the Gameboy and GameCube. It's reason for cancellation is unknown, but it is strange that Kirby itself was cut from the game.
4 Velvet Dark
Velvet Dark was going to be a sequel/spin-off of Perfect Dark. As Perfect Dark gained attention developers looked ahead and were thinking of making a game that featured the main character, Johanna Dark's, sister Velvet. The company working on this game was Rare Ltd. They filed a trademark for the game in 2000. The game was planned to be a stealth and action third-person adventure.
The reason for this games' cancellation appears to be that they wanted all resources to move on to Perfect Dark Zero instead.
3 Twelve Tales: Conker’s Quest
This title was planned to be released on the Nintendo 64. It was announced as Conker's Quest at E3 1997. The cancellation of this game was actually due to criticism from players who wanted Rare to stop making games with cute and friendly animals and work on something for more mature audiences.
So instead, Rare gave us Conker's Bad Fur Day with an M rating, an alcoholic lead, and perverted characters. What could have been a more innocent game with cute characters was ultimately lost. However, many consider Conker's Bad Fur Day to have aged well since its release.
2 Super Mario Spikers
The Mario franchise has plenty of titles in the genre of sports games. However, this particular game never came to be one of those titles. It was going to be a volleyball-wrestling hybrid. It is believed that the volleyball idea was the basis and the wrestling aspects came later.
Developed by Next Level Games for the Wii, they pitched the concept to Nintendo but they ultimately rejected the idea. Interestingly enough, the cancellation of the project was because Nintendo found the game to be too violent. Apparently, the violence looked too realistic and clashed with their code of honor.
1 Metroid Dread
Metroid Dread was going to be a 2-D sequel to Metroid Fusion for the Nintendo DS. It was first announced in 2005 in an issue of Game Informer but its released date was vague for some time. The facts got really confusing in 2007 when Nintendo denied working on a 2-D Metroid title after the release of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.
In 2010, Nintendo game designer Yoshio Sakamoto revealed that the game did actually exist at one point but if it were ever to be picked up again, it would likely just be totally redone from scratch. While seemingly likely that this title is cancelled, some fans still cling to hope that the title is just in a very long limbo.