In 2013, Shigeru Miyamoto famously said that he has “no good ideas” for a new game in the F-Zero franchise. But it looks like the series of false starts that have plagued the franchise actually go back much further than that.

According to Nintendo Life, Nintendo of Europe asked Criterion to pitch a new F-Zero game, which would have been announced during the Wii U’s unveiling at the 2011 E3 Expo. However, because the studio was working on Need For Speed: Most Wanted at the time, they couldn’t commit to producing the playable demo that Nintendo wanted. If Criterion and Nintendo had come to an agreement, the game likely would have been released in November 2012, right around the Wii U’s launch window.

Though Nintendo continues to create every Mario game in-house, these types of partnerships have come to define the company in the GameCube/Wii/Wii U era. In fact, the consolemaker previously partnered with Sega to develop F-Zero GX for the GameCube, the most recent console game in the F-Zero series. An arcade adaptation, F-Zero AX, was also produced by Sega.

Nintendo might be giving more thought to the F-Zero series nowadays as it was resurrected, in a manner of speaking, through Mario Kart 8‘s first downloadable expansion pack. The Legend of Zelda X Mario Kart 8 DLC Pack included F-Zero’s signature racing machine, the Blue Falcon, as well as a new track based on the futuristic Mute City.