Some games just refuse to stay dead. Two titles Nintendo scrapped back in 1996 are finally seeing the light of day, and they're heading to Switch after sitting in the vault for three decades.

According to ComicBook.com, the two canceled games are getting proper releases on Switch through Nintendo Switch Online. These were projects quietly killed off during the SNES-to-N64 transition, and if you were around for that era, you remember how brutal it was. Developers were scrambling to figure out 3D, and anything that didn't fit the new vision got axed.

The fact that these games survived at all is kind of wild. Canceled titles from that period usually end up as whispered forum posts, half-rotted beta cartridges, or obscure ROM dumps that someone's uncle found in a storage unit. For these to get official releases, cleaned up and put on modern consoles, that is a rare win for preservation.

I love seeing this kind of thing. The modding and preservation communities have been fighting for years to keep forgotten games alive, and every so often a publisher actually digs into their own archive and says, yeah, let's let people play this. It doesn't happen often enough.

Details on exactly what the games look like in their final form are still surfacing, but both are launching on August 4 via Nintendo Switch Online. The install base on Switch is massive, and these kinds of nostalgic deep cuts play best when everyone can access them.

Think about your own gaming history for a second. Ever had a game you loved just disappear? A server shut down, a sequel canceled, a project you followed for months just vanish? It stings. I still think about games I lost to dead MMO servers. Seeing a developer go back and finish what they started, even 30 years later, feels like a small act of respect for the people who cared about those games in the first place.

August 4 is right around the corner. And some of you reading this weren't even born when these got canceled. Welcome to the party.