Remember when Nintendo posted a photo of someone in a Mario costume peering creepily around a curtain?
The now-iconic image, posted by Nintendo of America on Twitter back in October 2016 to hype the upcoming reveal of Nintendo Switch, was instantly turned into a meme and reposted everywhere – including, multiple times, the pages of this very website.
But what was the story behind that photo? Where did it come from, and why was it so odd? Well, former Nintendo staff Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang have now discussed the incident on their podcast (thanks, Nintendo Life) – and the whole thing sounds as last-minute as it looked.
“This was very controversial,” Yang explained. “The person that had this idea was the former head of social. This person commissioned a photoshoot for the Mario costume character in the office to go… they basically staged 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? [Is] it 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 into oblivion and people were kind of upset about it, honestly.”
Ellis suggested the photo was only necessary as there had been no other images provided by Nintendo for that particular marketing beat – something that had left their team’s social media boss scrambling.
“Here’s the thing with these big beats and moments like this,” Ellis said. “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?
“There’s always some spreadsheet that’s like: here’s every single asset we need, every single sizing, every single use. And I think in that case they must have missed out, because why else otherwise would they be taking a last-second picture of Mario in the shower, you know?
“Peeping Tom Mario in the shower,” Yang chipped in.
“They’ll be on top of it this time,” Ellis concluded. “It won’t happen again.”
Fingers crossed for Birdo behind a shower curtain for the reveal of Switch 2?