Pokemon Pinball games appeared on the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, which likely led some fans to assume the spin-off series would become a regular on Nintendo handhelds. That proved not to be the case, as the series has not seen another game since 2003’s Pokemon Pinball: Ruby and Sapphire. However, we now know thanks to the Nintendo “gigaleak” that a new entry was planned for September 2006. The game would have featured Wi-Fi support, and been developed by “FUSE.” This information was shared on ResetEra, and one poster surmised that the listed developer probably refers to Fuse Games Limited, the team responsible for Mario Pinball Land and Metroid Prime Pinball.
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Based on the time frame, the game would have presumably been based on Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, but it’s impossible to say. Diamond and Pearl ended up releasing in September 2006 in Japan and the following year in North America. Perhaps this new Pokemon Pinball would have come too close to Diamond and Pearl‘s release date, or the game was based on previous generations and would have been considered outdated by the time the new generation released. Either way, the game was sadly shelved.
In addition to Pokemon Pinball, other cancelled DS projects were also discovered thanks to the gigaleak. Apparently, Geist DS was planned. Presumably, it would have been a follow-up to the Nintendo GameCube game, and it would have had online play, as well. Gauntlet DS was also planned, based on the arcade classic. Last but not least, Magic the Gathering creator Richard Garfield and developer NIGHTLIGHT had apparently come up with a game called “PLUCKER,” which would have been a strategy game that used figures, as opposed to cards.
While the gigaleak has given fans a lot of interesting information about Nintendo, it also leaves us with a lot of additional questions. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing how far in development any of these games were. Nintendo has actually sat on nearly finished games in the past, like Star Fox 2, but there’s just no telling if any of these games were similarly close to completion. For now, fans will just have to wonder about what could have been!
Would you have liked to see a new Pokemon Pinball? Are you disappointed these games never happened? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!
[H/T: Nintendo Everything]
