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It's hard for a company like Nintendo to have the opportunity to flesh out some of its existing properties given the limited resources it has, which is why the company traditionally sticks with what it knows does well with consumers. One franchise that gamers have been adamant to see return, however, is the long dormant racing series F-Zero.

It turns out that fans almost got one on Wii U if Nintendo had had its way, as a report has come in stating that the house of Mario initially pushed for a new F-Zero game to be headed up by none other than the developer behind Need for Speed and Burnout, Criterion Games. Evidently, that never ended up coming to fruition.

This report comes from Liam Robertson of Unseen 64, who claims that former vice president and creative director of Criterion Games Alex Ward has informed him of the shelved attempt at resurrecting the high-octane racing series on current-gen hardware. Robertson is infamous for bringing plans and assets for scrapped games to light, and his backing is solid. Suffice to say, his track record speaks for itself, but take this with a grain of salt as we can't confirm with the sources ourselves.

Anyway, the report states that Nintendo initially approached Criterion Games with the intention of having the studio develop the next iteration of F-Zero. For whatever reason, the Electronic Arts' owned studio was unable to take up the job, likely because the time frame in which this all occurred would have had the studio working on Need for Speed: Most Wanted, but it's an interesting bit of information nonetheless.

This all occurred back in 2011 though, which means that the Big N clearly has made no other moves to bring the game about since. That said, it's interesting to see that the Japanese gaming giant was still shopping around for a developer for F-Zero as early as the Wii U's launch, and it builds on the company's recent trend of establishing outside relationships and content through third-party partners. There's no doubt that Criterion would have been a perfect studio to tackle the project either, which is sure to make fans bummed about the the fact that Captain Falcon's return was instead saved for Super Smash Bros. on Wii U and 3DS.

Would you have liked a new F-Zero game from the same developer behind Burnout and Need for Speed? Are you hoping to see the series return at some point soon? Get at us in the comments.

Source: Unseen 64 (via NintendoLife)