Diablo Jr.: Explaining the Canceled Pokemon-Inspired Diablo Game
It’s difficult to imagine a kid-friendly version of the action-RPG Diablo series, but it was a real possibility twenty years ago at Blizzard.
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When thinking about kid-friendly video games, the Diablo series is not the first thing that comes to mind. However, in the aftermath of Diablo 2’s official release and the rise of Pokemon, there very nearly was an entry in the Diablo series created with children in mind. The project went through various stages of minor development before being officially canceled. Many details are still unknown to the public, likely because they had not been ironed out by Blizzard themselves in that brief development experiment.
This kid-friendly Diablo game was internally referred to as Diablo Jr. is the brainchild of programmer Jonathan Morin who was looking for a new project after Diablo 2. At this point, Pokemon was taking the world by storm and nearly every media creator wanted a slice of this brand-new creature battler pie. Some were quite successful such as Digimon. It’s unclear how well Diablo Jr. would actually be received by kids and parents alike, given that there was a degree of backlash to Pokemon and it can hardly be called as violent as the Diablo series.
What is Diablo Jr.?
The idea sparked when Jonathan Morin came across a Game Boy development kit. He wanted to transfer the Diablo formula to portable gaming systems. The main development discussions were focused on how the combat would function. Some wanted to retain the hack-and-slash combat of the Diablo games on PC, while others thought a turn-based RPG like Pokemon would fit better on the handheld system. The only known playable demo of the game was from a top-down perspective which seems to suggest the traditional hack-and-slash approach was chosen. There would also be separate unique releases like Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue, but for Diablo Jr., each release would focus on a different class. There would be Diablo Jr. Necromancer Edition, for example, and there would also be cross-system trading like in Pokemon. These classes would start in a town similar to Pokemon then battle and explore the wilderness and dungeons.
Morin was given a very small team and development officially began in 2002. After just half a year, and with some high-profile resignations from Blizzard, the project was reevaluated and canceled. The exact reason behind the cancellation is unknown. However, Blizzard isn’t known for making spinoffs or attempting to take advantage of the popular gaming zeitgeist. Rather, the company strives to create a single title in a genre and develop and improve it over the years. This is why the only MMO from Blizzard is World of Warcraft and the only hero shooter is Overwatch.
It’s also been speculated that because Diablo Jr. was an offline experience that did not take advantage of the online service Battle.net and was therefore unprofitable. Furthermore, the company would have to produce and manufacture GameBoy cartridges and publish the title through Nintendo. All of this was not in line with Blizzard’s PC focus at the time. Currently, there are several Blizzard titles on platforms besides PC, including the Nintendo Switch. Diablo Jr. has a sort of spiritual successor in the mobile-only title Diablo Immortal. It definitely won’t be as kid-friendly as Diablo Jr. but it will be the first major Blizzard title to not be released on PC.
Diablo Jr. is an interesting game in the history of Blizzard. The company could have chased the Pokemon trend and probably made at least a decent amount of money. However, it instead chose to focus on and cultivate its existing titles for the many years to come. The return of Diablo Jr. seems very unlikely, but the existence of Diablo Immortal seems to indicate that the company does want to chase trends, specifically the mobile game market.
Diablo Immortal is in development for mobile devices.
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