The Pokemon mini-game collection like WarioWare has reportedly been canceled

Key insights

• The ongoing Pokemon leaks have now revealed gameplay footage from games in development and canceled, such as a WarioWare-style mini-game collection.
• This canceled Pokemon mobile game was codenamed “Swallow” and would have had players complete fast-paced mini-games based on Pokemon.
• The gameplay of these mini-games has been leaked, including time-based challenges and mini-games that utilize a phone’s touchscreen.

It’s a new week, which means we have a bunch of new Pokémon leaks to clear up. A lot of the information we’ve gotten from these leaks so far relates to games that have already been released, like concept art for Pokemon ORAS, or details about games currently in development like Pokemon Legends: ZA and whatnot whatever Gen 10 is called. We’ve heard very little about canceled Pokémon games so far, but that changed pretty quickly with this week’s leaks.

Today, several codenames for unannounced Pokémon games as well as gameplay were revealed, giving us our first look at a Splatoon-inspired multiplayer game. Splatoon wasn’t the only major Nintendo game that Game Freak took inspiration from, as gameplay was also revealed for a title codenamed Project Swallow, a mobile mini-game collection in the style of WarioWare.

A Pokémon mini-game collection like WarioWare has reportedly been discontinued

Details about this title were first shared by Centro Leaks, which has been one of the biggest sources for recent Pokemon leaks in general. In a new tweet on their Twitter account, they share four mini-games from this title, all of which seem to be very fast-paced yet extremely simple. The first requires players to stop a rapidly filling and emptying bar at the right height so that a giant machoke has enough power to crack the moon.

In a second game, players simply move Lillypads to find a hidden Poliwag. In the third split game, players presumably tap their screen as a large ball hits the hand of an outstretched arm, while in the final mini-game, players control their momentum with a baseball bat to hit a home run as a Poké Ball flies towards them. They’re all very simple, just like WarioWare, and we can probably guess that these mini-games were intended to be played in quick succession.

Centro Leaks claims that this mini-game collection was ultimately discontinued, but didn’t give a reason why. We can briefly see a giant cylinder in one of the videos, which would presumably have served as some kind of mini-game selection screen. So perhaps Game Freak was having trouble releasing enough mini-games that were different enough to justify a full game? We’ll never know for sure, but it’s another piece of Pokémon history for the books.