A homebrew developer has released an unofficial, pint-sized recreation of a '90s Kirby game that never was. Available now on NovaStar's itch.io, Kid Kirby is an imagining of the superstar's unrealised SNES adventure, which was cancelled way back in 1995.

Kid Kirby was originally conceived as a key title for the Super NES Mouse peripheral, launched by Nintendo in 1992 as part of its Super Mario Paint package. The concept would see a younger version of the adorable pink puffball questing to save the Dream Spring of Dream Land, encountering various familiar locations and characters along the way - including a junior King Dedede.

Curiously, Kid Kirby was being developed by Scotland's DMA Design Ltd., the studio that would go on to develop the groundbreaking Grand Theft Auto franchise just two years later. Unfortunately, however, Kid Kirby was cancelled during early production, with poor sales of the Super NES Mouse generally considered the defining factor behind Nintendo's decision.

As such, save for a selection of renders and concept art, Kid Kirby remained nothing more than a fun piece of trivia - an unrealised Kirby game developed by no less than Rockstar North.

Working from interviews, anecdotes, and a small selection of archival assets, NovaStar's own imagining of Kid Kirby is a physics-based maze affair, with precise, momentum-based gameplay similar to games such as World of Goo, Angry Birds, and even platformers like Celeste. Using the mouse, players "pinch-and-pull" Kid Kirby to catapult him through labyrinths of treacherous enemies and obstacles, using strength, weight, and momentum to help Dream Land's Best Boy navigate the world.

Of course, even in his juvenile form, Kid Kirby retains his shape-shifting abilities, transforming into a paper plane, an anvil, a parasol, and even a fireball - giving him a little more control and agency over his trajectory - otherwise, he's just pinging around the joint like a pinball.

NovaStar: "(The) original goal was simply to realise some of the gameplay concepts the Kid Kirby developers had using the publicly released assets, and now that most of the concepts and assets have been used, there's not much more I could do with the game that wouldn't be wholly invented by myself."

"I might make another fangame at some point in the future though!"

The idea of essentially recreating a game from anecdotal evidence, a fistful of concept art, and a few scant assets is quite fascinating. I wonder how close this inspired realisation is to the game that we never got. Of course, it goes without saying that NovaStar's Kid Kirby recreation is not officially affiliated with Nintendo. And we typically know how that tends to work out.

At any rate, it's a cute, impressive vision of what might have been, and we should probably just enjoy that... while it lasts.