Following a nearly 5 year gap since their last original project, Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze (which just relaunched on Switch to rave reception), Retro Studios might be gearing up to reveal another series revival with Star Fox Grand Prix, a game which allegedly combines racing and shooting.

Both Eurogamer and IGN have now lended their thumbs up to the leak, with IGN saying that the game will see an adventure mode styled after Diddy Kong Racing, with a hub and bosses. Players would earn speed boosts through shooting down enemy ships. 

Kotaku also chimed in briefly, mostly to add details that another project that was percolating at Retro has likely been canned following a rather rocky development cycle. What are your thoughts on the matter? Has it taken Retro this long to come up with a Star Fox racing game? And will we see this at E3? Hard to say, but keep it locked to Gamingbolt as we find out.

News broke today that Retro Studios’ next upcoming game may in fact be a Star Fox racer, which- okay, Retro has made an art form out of subverting expectations, out of giving players what they never realized they wanted. But is this actually what they were working on over the last five years? As a reminder, Tropical Freeze‘s development ended in 2013. What have they been doing since?

Apparently, there was a second project in the works at Retro, according to Kotaku– a project that ran into development trouble, and may even have been canceled. This, if true (the report seems to corroborate that Retro is getting Star Fox Grand Prix out), is not the first time Retro has faced development trouble- the studio has a famous history of mismanagement and development troubles on its games, with its first four games all being canceled as the studio was consolidated around the then upcoming Metroid Prime.

If this is the case- what was that other game that got canceled? Did it get canceled? It is important to note that Kotaku’s report never specifies if it was. Will we ever find out more about it?

The one thing we can count on when it comes to Nintendo’s Retro Studios is to make games that literally no one ever expected them to. Originally, when the studio was first created, no one wanted them to be helming a first person shooter reboot of the beloved Metroid franchise- but they did it, and won their way into everyone’s hearts.

Then, of course, after the Metroid Prime trilogy was completed, everyone expected them to follow up with something similar, a western flavored offering that was otherwise missing from Nintendo’s catalog. Retro followed up with… Donkey Kong Country Returns. Which was, again, unexpected. It helped that both it, and its follow up Tropical Freeze, were excellent games, though.

And now, for their next project, according to Eurogamer, they might be working on a new racing game based on the Star Fox franchise, which- wait just a minute. A racing game? Based on the Star Fox franchise? Why? Who asked for this? Why not make an F-Zero game if they wanted a futuristic racer? Why make a racer at all?

Of course, Retro marches to the beat of its own drum, and its games have never disappointed. Star Fox: Grand Prix, as it is apparently called, might sound entirely bizarre, but Retro has won the benefit of the doubt many times over by this point, and I will let them reveal it on their own terms- maybe at E3 this year?

Meanwhile, I guess the leak gives us all a chance to get the shock out of our systems…