Canceled

It might sound strange to the modern ear, given how insular the company is today, but in the late 90’s Nintendo made a bid to produce Harry Potter games. Unseen 64 has revealed sketches commissioned by the company made for a pitch to JK Rowling. This was 1998. The Potter books (of which there were only two, with a third being published soon) had entered America during the previous year, and were growing in popularity. A small war was brewing between the world’s megacorporations as to who would control product licensing for the property. On the video game side, Nintendo was competing with Disney and Universal. Their pitches had to be personally approved by Rowling herself. She wound up turning down all three proposals, ultimately signing an all-encompassing merch deal with Warner Bros. the following year. The Harry Potter pitch was created by Nintendo Software Technology, the internal team that developed games in America(such as Ridge Racer 64 and Crystalis), and consisted of simple drawings depicting what the characters and