Before the film rights for J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels were purchased by Warner Bros., Nintendo made a pitch to make a video game centered around Quidditch back in 1998.

According to a new report from Unseen64, which is dedicated to uncovering unreleased video games, Nintendo made a pitch to secure exclusive rights to the Harry Potter franchise. In 1998, the video game giant made a pitch for the rights just one year after the first book hit store shelves.

One of the games was based on a third-person action game, which we’ve seen attempted throughout the years, while the other was based on the highly popular Potter sport Quidditch. The ideas reportedly never got past the early phases, and the rest is history. Some concept art has survived since Nintendo’s pitch to obtain the rights to the Harry Potter video games, and we’ve included it below.

An artist who worked on the project says, “All together it was only a week of insanely furious scribbling things to the digital artists to create animations for mock game demos.” There was reportedly some concerns about the style of the game, with some believing they should stick to the book art, while others wanted to see Harry Potter get the Nintendo-transformation.

Nintendo has done an excellent job with some other properties, and we have to wonder what could have been if the company ended up securing the rights to the material. Although, this was also before the first film hit theaters in 2001. Who knows how the art designed for the video game could have influenced our beloved Potter films?

The report suggests that the Potter games were never able to move past the beginning stages, and then Warner Bros. obtained the film rights, with EA later developing the multiple video games based on the films. Of course, a Quidditch game was made back in 2003, but it would have been interesting to see what Nintendo came up with so early in Pottermania.