Nintendo Gigaleak Reveals Scrapped DS Projects, Including A New Pokémon Pinball Game

As you’ve likely seen this week, the Nintendo ‘Gigaleak’ dating back to last year has resurfaced. The second round of leaks over the past few days have revealed early Wii Remote concepts, confirmed Retro’s cancelled Zelda game and also Nintendo’s plans for a Metroid title by Intelligence Systems.

In the latest update, information about various scrapped Nintendo DS projects has been released, including details of a new Pokémon Pinball title. This would have been the first entry in the pocket monster pinball series since the Game Boy Advance generation. According to the leak, this particular entry – targeting a 2006 release – was going to handled by the Metroid Prime Pinball and Super Mario Ball developer Fuse, and would have featured Wi-Fi support.

ResetEra user MondoMega has once again shared this information, along with details about various other cancelled Nintendo DS projects including a portable version of the GameCube first-person shooter Geist, and a proposal from the Magic the Gathering creator. Here’s the round-up via Nintendo Everything:

-Rhythm Tengoku is listed as ‘RIQ’ (full working title is known to be Rhythm IQ). Notes for the game say “The songs will be newly written for this game, so OK for the whole world”.
-Elite Beat Agents was once known as Super Sonic Agents.
-Pokemon Pinball is listed as a DS title, with Wi-Fi support. Developer is ‘FUSE’. Target release date was September 2006.
-Geist DS is listed. Had online play.
-Gauntlet DS.
-Some game called ‘PLUCKER’, developed by ‘NIGHTLIGHT’. Notes: ‘Proposal from Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic the Gathering. A strategy game that replaces card games with figures’.
‘Digitylish DS’. there were plans to bring the series over to DS before DSiWare existed.
-Soma Bringer was once known as Angelic Soma, and included online play. The game was originally set to be complete in September 2006.
-Banjo and Conker being replaced by Dixie and Tiny in Diddy Kong Racing DS is something NCL specifically note.
-There was some consideration in having NoA and NoE localize and publish Contact (by Grasshopper Manufacture). The spreadsheet describes it as a “Mother-like”.
-They considered redoing the character designs for the North American localization of Magical Starsign.
-The notes on New Super Mario Bros. specially mentions “Plans to distribute additional data for new courses via Wi-Fi”. Also mentions reusing the minigames from Super Mario 64 DS.
-Digitylish DS had “two prototypes in progress”, and Skip were “considering other projects in parallel”. It was suggest that they “extend the prototype period by 6 months to explore a new business model”; possibly an early reference to to DSi Shop.
-At the point this document was made online play wasn’t actually locked in for Pokemon Diamond and Pearl; mentioned as a consideration.
-There were a lot of working titles and early names. Most are “franchise name” then DS or [number of installment]; Chibi-Robo DS, Jump Super Stars 2, Mario vs. Donkey Kong DS, Yoshi’s Island 2, Kirby DS, Burabura Donkey DS, etc. Some publicly known early titles were also in use here, like Detect Hacker (Project Hacker), Wish Room (Hotel Dusk) and Eternal Chronicle (Glory of Heracles). There’s also ‘Game Fortune Bag’ (Clubhouse Games) and Marionation Gear (Chosoju Mecha MG).

MondoMega also shared extra details related to some GameCube projects. Donkey Kong Barrel Blast and Super Paper Mario were originally listed as GameCube releases. Captain Rainbow, as previously mentioned, was also listed as a GameCube title, and NCL didn’t want power plug/outlets in Chibi-Robo to be localised.

Would you have been interested in a Pokémon Pinball game for the Nintendo DS? How about a Geist game on the dual-screen handheld? Leave your thoughts down below.