It's hard to imagine Adam Sandler's hit movie Happy Gilmore becoming a video game classic, but it apparently almost happened two decades ago when the idea was pitched to Sandler. Despite the star of the movie being "greatly interested" in the project, it unfortunately - or perhaps mercifully depending on how it turned out - never managed to make it to consoles and a whole fan-base of a certain age will all feel cheated to not have been able to play this game on the likes of the Xbox and PlayStation.

The details about the possibility of a game ever existing were shared on Twitter by Mike Mika, who served as Digital Eclipse's studio head at the time. This was the company who attempted to bring the game to the world, pitching the idea to Adam Sandler and his Happy Madison Productions team. Resembling the plot of the movie, the game would have seen players switching between a fighting element and sports game, although exactly what this would have looked like in reality is something we are just going to have to imagine. -In the post, Mika said, "At one point we were pitching this hybrid fighting and golf game with the Happy Madison crew. Good times. It should have been greenlit because it was a great idea."

Many Twitter users followed up on the post, citing it as being a "spiritual sequel to Ninja Golf", and questioning how no-one wanted to make a Happy Gilmore game, but were more than happy to produce a terrible Nintendo Gameboy game based on one of Sandler's other movies, Little Nicky. Such is the way of the world.

Mika was asked if Sandler himself had seen the pitch, to which he replied, "He was on the periphery of it all- super supportive. His brother was amazing, he was the ringer in trying to get these companies to get off their ass and also to get the right deal. We did Little Nicky with them and they were the absolute best group to work with." He followed up by adding, "The best thing is the moment you meet them they make you feel like one of the guys. Got to know Allen Covert & @NickGoossen more than anyone else and they were so rad and moved mountains. We all wanted to do Gilmore b/c they were so fun to work with - it was contagious."

While we will likely never get to see the game that would have been, Mika did tell one follower that he would try to dig out some more of the pitch information about the game. He went on to note that with Netflix now getting into the games market, and their affiliation with Sandler, that it would be great if they would consider taking on a Happy Gilmore title. They say some ideas just have to bide their time, and there have been stranger tales than an idea sitting in a box for twenty years and suddenly finding a place in the world.