Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle Director Once Suggested The Wind Waker Being Ported To Game Boy Advance

Ubisoft’s Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle has become one of this year’s biggest surprises, thanks to the ingenuity of the battle system and the adaptable controls that work for players of all ages.

Part of that credit goes to creative director Davide Soliani, who inspired the team to make the game so dang good. But this isn’t the only project that he’s taken to heart.

It turns out Soliani actually suggested an ambitious project years ago, in the form of a Game Boy Advance port of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. The cel-shaded Zelda adventure originally appeared on the GameCube, before seeing a port for Nintendo Wii U that would become a hit with fans.

Alas, the project never came to be. But Soliani found a lot of love in trying anyway. On his Twitter, the director noted, “Long time ago, I guess it was the 2003, me and Fabio Pagetti (the artist who made the pixel art below) almost convinced our managing director to let us produce a demo for a GBA version of Wind Waker. No luck that time, but it was running nicely. We were dreamers.” He also included a screenshot, which you can see below.

It appears that the game would’ve taken sort of a side view perspective of the action, instead of the 3D we’ve gotten used to in previous ports. But this would’ve been a novel approach, and there’s no doubt the GBA version could have easily adapted to the play style we’ve come to expect from Wind Waker.

While it’s sad we’ll never get to see what became of the port, it’s neat of Soliani to admit what he tried to do at one point, and how he could’ve rocked the GBA world. Who knows, maybe we’ll see a handheld port of Wind Waker down the road, particularly for the 3DS and/or Nintendo Switch. We’ll always take another one.

Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle is available now for Nintendo Switch.

Thanks to Nintendo Life for the suggestion!