Back in 2016, Nintendo tweeted out an image of a person in a Mario costume peeking out from behind a curtain. The tweet was meant to tease the upcoming reveal of the Switch. But the odd image was seen as creepy by some and quickly became a meme online. And according to two people who used to work for Nintendo, the company wasn’t happy about the situation.
As spotted by IGN, former Nintendo Minute hosts Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang explained the story behind that strange Mario image in a recent episode of the duo’s popular podcast. And according to Yang, the image, which was taken for that tweet, was “very controversial” within Nintendo.
“The person that had this idea was the former head of social,” explained Yang, while clarifying that it wasn’t her co-host. “This person commissioned a photoshoot for the Mario costume character in the office to go behind…They basically staged a photo of the Mario costume character going behind the curtain and doing the thing.”
“It caused some concern actually because, of course, Nintendo doesn’t want to not manage people’s expectations. And this was too much in the zone of speculation. What could it be…too much of a tease for something as big as a console reveal? So it didn’t go over too well. Then, of course, it got memed to oblivion and people were kind of upset about it, honestly.”
Ellis further explained that with these “big” announcements and events, you always need “more assets than you think you do.”
“And in this case, there was clearly no asset to pair with this news and nobody wants to put out a tweet that has no image with it. So it’s like, ‘Well what can we do?’” said Ellis.
“There’s always some spreadsheet. Here’s every single asset we need, every single sizing, every single use. And I think in that case they must have just missed out, because why else otherwise would they be taking a last-second picture of Mario in the shower?”
“[Nintendo] were upset because they didn’t use an official thing,” added Yang.
So, will we get another weird image of Mario creeping around some curtains when Nintendo eventually teases its (probably not far off) Switch 2 announcement? According to Ellis and Yang, don’t count on it.
“They’ll be ready next time,” said Ellis. “They will be on top of it this time. It won’t happen again.”
.
