Monster Boy dev shows off the DuckTales game it pitched to Disney

Game Atelier, the developer behind 2018's sublime platformer Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, has offered a glimpse of DuckTales QuackShots, a gorgeous hand-drawn take on Disney's beloved cartoon caper which sadly - curse the video game gods - just wasn't to be, never making it past the pitching stage.

QuackShots first reared its head earlier this week when Cursed Kingdom publisher FDG Entertainment announced it as its next project and latest collaboration with Game Atelier. Unfortunately, the announcement just so happened to land on 1st April, leaving onlookers as suspicious as they were excited by the news - skepticism that proved merited when FDG owned up to its April Fool's japery the following day.

Although hardly unexpected, the truth was still a bit of a disappointment; after all, not only does DuckTales - both the cartoon series and its various game adaptations, starting with Capcom's 8-bit classic - have a legion of admirers eager to see Scrooge McDuck and friends get the modern day video game treatment, the prospect of Game Atelier taking the reins on the project following its sterling Wonder Boy revival was a genuinely exciting one.

According to a follow-up tweet from FDG, it was a prospect that excited Game Atelier too; the gorgeous images accompanying the April Fool's Day ruse, it explained, were, in fact, part of a pitch made early last year in the hope of turning the concept into reality. "We worked hard on a legit pitch to Disney," it explained, "but unfortunately never got the license."

"It would've been a shame to bury the material so it became this years #AprilFools," the publisher continued, "Maybe someday Disney will reconsider?".

Judging by the overwhelmingly positive response to FDG's initial reveal, that's a sentiment shared by many others too - but while we wait for Disney to see the error of its way, there's always WayForward's lavish remaster of the original DuckTales game to see us through.