Believe it or not, but there was a time when the Harry Potter series was just a little-known book for children. First published in the UK In 1997, only 500 copies of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone were printed as part of the book’s first printing. But over the course of its first twelve months of availability, children all across the country went crazy for Harry, and J.K. Rowling was able to auction off the adaptation rights to the novel for a huge sum of money.
According to Unseen64, Nintendo was one of the companies that pushed hard to obtain the Harry Potter license. Their initial pitch involved two games, a traditional third-person adventure game and another title based on the fictional sport of quidditch. If the pitch had been successful, both titles would have been released for the Nintendo 64 and Game Boy Advance. You can view some of Nintendo’s concept art from their presentation to Rowling at Unseen64.
Rowling ultimately chose Warner Bros. to create film adaptations of the franchise and Warner Bros. in turn picked Electronic Arts to create more than a dozen Harry Potter video games. But in some parallel universe, these exists a Harry Potter game created by Nintendo and I bet it’s amazing.
