On the latest episode of the 8-4 Play podcast, former-games-journalist-turned-game-designer James “Milkman” Mielke made a guest appearance, speaking about his experiences working at Q? Entertainment and his involvement with Lumines: Electronic Symphony. Though he mostly spoke of the game as it is, he did spill some beans behind the game that could have been:

“Originally, when I first though about rebooting Lumines, I was like well…maybe it would be interesting to attach it to a big license in particular, because then it would seem very different. And at the same time, depending on the license, it would seem very much like Lumines. So, I originally pitched this game as Daft Punk Lumines.”

Mielke mentioned that Ubisoft was totally on board with the idea, and even met with Daft Punk’s management who also expressed interest. However, the French duo was busy in Los Angeles working on the score for Tron: Legacy at the time. This doesn’t seem like the biggest impediment, but Daft Punk didn’t want to use any of their existing tracks for the game. That posed a serious issue.

It’s unfortunate, but the only real impediment to get that project rolling was scheduling conflicts. There’s no way Q? Entertainment could have sat on their laurels, waiting for Daft Punk to complete their existing projects and then wait for them to score dozens of tracks with the Vita’s launch quickly closing in. If they had another year to wait, who knows what could have been?

Source: 8-4 Play 2/24/2012: BLOCK-DROPPIN’ BEATS (starts around 1:45:40)