If you somehow missed the news that Nintendo was re-releasing the Super Nintendo as the SNES Classic Edition, you also missed the somewhat insane tidbit: the company is finally releasing the previously cancelled Star Fox 2, more than two decades after it was shelved.

While the game has been leaked and shared among hobbyists online, it never saw a proper release, due to Nintendo wanting to utilize the soon-to-be-released Nintendo 64 (to which we eventually saw Star Fox 64). The game’s original development team, Argonaut Games, were also surprised by the announcement.

One of the key developers within Argonaut that worked on the title, Dylan Cuthbert, was definitely happy with the news:

“I didn’t know about it at all,” Cuthbert said to Games Industry.biz. “We don’t have any work happening with Nintendo right now so there wouldn’t have been an NDA-safe way of letting me know anyway. On the other hand, I got to have a big awesome surprise like everyone else so I’m quite happy about that.

“It’s an absolutely awesome feeling. Incredible really. Perhaps a first in the games industry even.”

To recap, the game’s development was actually completed, it was fully QA-tested and ready to go – Nintendo simply wanted to focus everything on the Nintendo 64 and Star Fox 64.

“I think Nintendo decided there might be a strategy for it in the future… and guess what? There is,” Cuthbert continued.

“That’s some serious future planning right there. Lesser companies can’t find their data for games they made even ten years ago, but Nintendo properly archived the work and that’s awesome for all of us.”

It’s worth noting pre-orders for the SNES Classic haven’t gone live yet in North America – so keep your eyes peeled! The throwback re-release is set to launch on September 29th of this year.