Back in the '90s, it wasn't uncommon for Japanese video games to be released overseas, sporting an entirely different title and brand-new graphics, in an attempt to make them more appealing to Western audiences, for better or worse.
One interesting example of this is the 1995 Super Famicom puzzle game Panel De Pon, which ended up being released in the West, under the name Tetris Attack, and that also famously swapped out the fairy-like characters of the original Panel De Pon for new artwork featuring characters and elements taken from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island.
In the past, it's been claimed before that prior to landing on Yoshi's Island, it wasn't actually the only theme that Nintendo considered for the Western localization, with the company at one point pondering a slightly darker approach, reaching out to Rare about the possibility of turning it into a Killer Instinct-themed game instead.
According to three former Killer Instinct devs we were able to check with, however, including the game's head programmer Mark Betteridge, the background artist & designer Chris Seavor, and the composer Robin Beanland, this might not be entirely accurate, with none of them having heard about this approach before.
This piece of "trivia" was originally published in a small section featured in Nintendo Magazine System UK (issue 40, published in 1996), and is based on information that NCL's head of PR, Yashiro Minigawa, shared with Nintendo Magazine System UK directly — though no direct quote was given at the time.
It recently came to our attention thanks to the Supper Mario Broth, resurfacing it over on Twitter/X. But when we checked Seavor, he nor none of the colleagues could remember Nintendo approaching Rare about the game, suggesting it either didn't happen or if it did, it wasn't under any major consideration.
Here's the relevant section from the magazine, for reference:
"So [Panel de Pon] is highly playable and has amazing combo potential. Great. Ah, but it also has a twee soundtrack and somewhat naff fairy characters for players to control. It's also a puzzler, and puzzle games are notoriously hard to sell to the British gaming public. Which may explain why Nintendo has asked Rare to look into substituting its own Killer Instinct characters and sound effects into the game. [...] Rare will not confirm or deny involvement in the conversion project, despite the fact that Mr. Minagawa head of PR at Nintendo Japan] told us about it himself."
As Seavor told Time Extension, "I've never heard of it" and "if Mark never heard of it then I can safely say it's bollocks and you can quote me on that,"
At this point, we would typically reach out to the Stampers, Rare's co-founders, to see what they might have to say about this, but given they are notoriously media shy and have ignored all our other requests for comment/interviews in the past, it's unlikely we'll get an answer in this instance. So, it looks like we'll just have to take Seavor's word for it.