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Harry Potter and the Failed Nintendo Exclusivity Bid

While we’ve had many Harry Potter games of varying quality over the years, some events in the late 90’s and early 2000’s could have swung us into an alternate timeline where Nintendo held the exclusive licence to make games based on the franchise.

This has been uncovered and documented in a short video by game historian Liam Robertson, who has hosted his findings on the DidYouKnowGaming? channel, embedded below.

In 1999 part of Nintendo of America became interested in Harry Potter and the creation of a title for the N64. An important caveat here being the fact that Nintendo wanted exclusive access to the licence, hoping to tie future outings of the wizarding world to Nintendo hardware releases.

This, of courses, didn’t come to pass as EA scooped up Harry potter and produced titles for it across the popular consoles of the time, including Nintendo’s own Game Boy Advance but not the N64.

We won’t spoil any more of the interesting tales from this investigation but we will mention the strange art style that the potential Harry Potter N64 game would have had. Initially the artists on the game wanted to stick to the style of the original book covers, as illustrated by Thomas Taylor, but was forced to make the game look closer to a manga.

Some of the original concept art with the intended style has survived, and you can see the interpretation of Hogwarts castle in the header image above.

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