Sonic Mania co-dev pitched a new Darkwing Duck, and you can play it
Let's get dangerous!
After giving Sonic the Hedgepig a retro revamp, one of the studios behind Sonic Mania hoped to have a crack at another 90s platformer: Darkwing Duck. Headcannon Studios had hoped to make a new game based on Capcom's 1992 NES platformer, even making a demo and pitching it to the publishers, but Capcom didn't bite. Games are pitched and rejected all the time, of course, but this is one you can not only see, you can download and play too. Here, you can watch it first.
Headcannon say their pitched game was "based loosely" on Capcom's NES adaptation of the Disney cartoon. Darkwing Duck would once again jump around and blast through baddies, this time packing a grappling hook so he can swing with gay abandon.
Headcannon's Simon "Stealth" Thomley explains in an accompanying video that he'd wanted to make a Darkwing Duck game for a while, and some Capcom USA folks he met at E3 seemed interested in the idea. But while Headcannon went on to make the one-level pitch demo, they got bounced between various Capcom contacts for ages with no sign of hope, and eventually Headcannon gave up.
"Some time after that, I was told by a credible source that Disney wouldn't even be interested in that sort of thing right now anyway," Thomley added. "So, we had just spent a few months of our own time working on something that's not going to take us anywhere."
Ploughing ahead with a pitch demo despite not getting a firm response is a bold move but hey, at least they have something to share with the world.
You can download Headcannon's Darkwing Duck pitch demo over here for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Capcom re-released ye olde Darkwing Duck in 2017 as part of the The Disney Afternoon Collection.