2 Canceled Nintendo Games From 1996 Are Finally Releasing After 30 Years

January 31, 2026, 7:00am

A pair of canceled Nintendo games that were originally supposed to launch in 1996 are finally being released this year. Since taking over the video game market in the 1980s, Nintendo has published countless games that have gone on to be hugely influential. Unfortunately, not everything that Nintendo has created over the years has been a success, which has led to some projects being scrapped behind the scenes before they could ever reach the hands of gamers. Now, in a surprise move, Nintendo has chosen to bring back two canceled titles on Switch and Switch 2.

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In recent days, Nintendo announced the full lineup of games it plans to bring to Nintendo Switch Online when its new Virtual Boy catalog arrives on February 17th. At launch, seven games from the Virtual Boy will become playable to Switch Online members, with an additional nine promised to come to the service before the end of the year. Shockingly, this slate of nine future games will also include two titles that were never released for the Virtual Boy previously.

The games in question that are getting released for the first time happen to be Zero Racers and D-Hopper. Zero Racers is a game that belongs F-Zero franchise and was meant to be the first 3D entry in the racing series before its cancellation. D-Hopper, which was previously known as Dragon Hopper, is then a top-down adventure title where players have to fight off monsters and traverse through a handful of different fantasy-themed of levels. Both games were completely finished and were promoted by Nintendo across various avenues in the 1990s before they were ultimately chosen to remain unreleased.

Why Were These Nintendo Games Canceled?

So why did Nintendo cancel Zero Racers and D-Hopper? Well, the short answer is that the Virtual Boy was a monumental failure for Nintendo. By all accounts, it’s the company’s worst hardware to date and flopped so spectacularly that Nintendo ended its support for the platform after only one year of availability. When it discontinued the Virtual Boy, this led to games like Zero Racer and D-Hopper getting canned as well. Luckily, for those who have held out hope to see these forgotten games finally get released in an official capacity, that will now be happening some three decades later.