WHATEVER HAPPENED TO
Having hit gold releasing games based on the popular Home Alone movies, publisher THQ dreamt up a brand-new adventure for crafty young Kevin McCallister… but it soon turned into a nightmare
The first mention of a new Home Alone spin-off was made in the May 1993 issue of US magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly. In an interview feature with Argonaut Software, which was focussed on the Super FX chip, boss Jez San let the details slip. “We’ve done a new SNES interpretation of Home Alone 2 for THQ,” he revealed, “but it’s not based on the movie. We’ve taken the characters from the film and created a totally new game story involving them. It’s probably going to be called Kevin’s Dream or Kevin’s Nightmare.”
Obviously the game was never released and none of the key players at Argonaut can recall why. Jez draws a blank when asked about it, while producer Jon Dean can only speculate. “I do recall a lot of work going into the game,” he says, “although I left the studio before it was finished, so I can’t help with the reason why it was never released. I can offer some speculation though. The longer after the film’s release it took to complete, the less valuable the IP would be in the market, and so THQ most likely opted to cancel.”
Jon makes a good point. The Home Alone 2 movie was released in October 1992, and Argonaut was working on the game in mid-1993, presumably targeting an end of year release. Would the concept be stale by then? It would seem so – except that the Mega Drive version of Home Alone 2, based directly on the movie, was released in late 1993. And then in the January 1994 issue of Nintendo Power, it was revealed that Home Alone 2: Kevin’s Dream was still coming – but not for the SNES. The title was now Game Boy bound, with a vague release date of winter 1994.
Winter 1994 came and went, with no sign of a Kevin’s Dream game pak beneath the Christmas tree. More movie sequels came and went, and over time the first two films established themselves as perennial festive favourites. Then in 2020, Kevin’s Dream made a loooong overdue appearance, as part of the infamous ‘Lot Check leaks’. Lot Check is a Nintendo Of America process that reviews and approves all games prior to release. Hackers ma
