Former Disney Interactive concept artist Ken Christiansen confirmed to Time Extension that Disney developed a Super Smash Bros.-style crossover fighter with Activision attached. It was never released.
For thirteen years, Disney’s Smash Bros. clone existed as a rumor built from a handful of images on an artist’s portfolio site.
The artist has finally talked about it.
Ken Christiansen, a former concept artist at Disney Interactive, confirmed to Time Extension that the project was real. A crossover fighting game starring Disney characters, developed with Activision attached, was pitched sometime in the 2000s.
It never got made.
Kingdom Hearts is why it happened
According to Christiansen, the success of the first Kingdom Hearts convinced Disney it could put its characters into other games and audiences would love it.
So Disney went looking for the next crossover, and landed on Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. format.
What Christiansen actually did there
His job explains why the concept art exists at all.
Christiansen was regularly assigned to produce artwork for proposed games, material used in internal presentations aimed at convincing executives to greenlight production. Most of those pitches never went any further.
The fighting game was one of several concepts he worked up during that period. Another was a one-on-one fighter built around Disney’s more aggressive characters, leaning on deep cuts the way Smash Bros. does.
The concept art shows characters as action figures
The images depict Disney characters mid-battle, rendered as action-figure versions of themselves rather than as they appear on screen.
One shows a warrior mouse facing off against a towering Beast.
The project has been reported under the title Disney’s Action Figure Face Off, though that name comes from coverage rather than from Disney directly, so treat it as reported rather than official.
The art leaked in 2013 and then nothing happened
Fans have known something existed for over a decade.
In 2013, outlets including Siliconera and Nintendo Life found images on Christiansen’s personal portfolio site and wrote about them. The artwork was clearly Disney, clearly a fighting game, and clearly not a product anyone could buy.
Christiansen said nothing publicly about it for the next thirteen years.
That silence is why the project stayed folklore. Fans had pictures and no confirmation, which is the precise recipe for a rumor that will not die.
The Rescue Rangers movie made a joke about it
In the closing credits of Disney+’s Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers in 2022, a billboard advertises a Smash Bros.-style game starring the Disney Afternoon lineup.
Viewers asked why that game did not exist.
It turns out Disney had genuinely tried, roughly two decades before the movie made the joke.
Disney is spending on games now
Disney spent this summer laying out a games strategy built around exactly the idea this project represented. The company now counts nine gaming franchises that have each grossed over $1 billion, Kingdom Hearts among them, and has been pushing hard into partnerships with Epic and others.
The pitch Christiansen was drawing concept art for in the 2000s is, more or less, the strategy Disney is executing in 2026. It just took twenty years and a different set of partners.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
Time Extension (September 2026), the original interview with Ken Christiansen confirming the project, the Activision involvement, and the Kingdom Hearts connection
IGN (September 2026), the report that surfaced this coverage
Siliconera and Nintendo Life (2013), the original discovery of the concept art on Christiansen’s portfolio site
PopGeeks (September 2, 2026), the Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers credits billboard detail and the additional one-on-one fighter concept
The Walt Disney Company (August 13, 2026), the games strategy naming nine billion-dollar franchises