Former Nintendo employees say the photo of Mario teasing the Switch was “very controversial” in the company: “It got memed into oblivion, and people were kind of upset”
You know how people complain that the photos their friends take of them are so much more unflattering than the photos they take of themselves? Mario has hardly ever had that problem. Nintendo’s mustachioed plumber usually looks the same level of approachable, no matter if he’s presented as an arcade game sprite, 3D hero, or duvet cover. But on one fateful day in 2016, Mario looked creepy. Really creepy. Nintendo posted an unsettling photo to promote the Switch, and now former employees have revealed the company’s regret.
On a recent episode of their podcast, Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang responded to an audience question wondering where the notorious image came from. In it, a person in an overgrown Mario costume — complete with a giant, grinning head — peeks out from behind a curtain. Immediately, people began photoshopping the unblinking Mario in stills from the movie Psycho, or making GIFs of Mario peering out in…not necessarily a threatening way, but in a way that is concerning.
“This [photo] was very controversial,” Yang says. Apparently, a former social media head commissioned a Mario costume photoshoot in the Nintendo office and “it caused some concern.”
Nintendo wanted to manage people’s expectations for their new console, Yang shares, and the Mario photo was “too much in the zone of speculation.” Without an official console asset, Nintendo worried that fans would interpret a quasi-human Mario as overpromising. In reality, fans interpreted Mario as being in the shower.
“Of course, it got memed to oblivion, and people were kind of upset about it, honestly,” Yang continues. But she and Ellis agree that Nintendo probably learned its lesson about planning official images far in advance of any announcement.
“It won’t happen again,” they both say. So it’s official: Mario will be beautiful forevermore.
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