Ubisoft E3 director looks back on Mario + Rabbids' reveal and the creative director's tears of joy
E3's greatest moment?
Every E3 had its iconic moments, and quite a few of those belong to Nintendo. The “kicking ass, taking names” intro of Reggie, his “My body is ready” line years later, the Twilight Princess reveal with Miyamoto popping up on stage…there’s almost too many to name. Without a doubt, one of them would be another Miyamoto surprise, which actually led to what many consider to be one of E3’s most memorable happenings.
The year was 2017 and the press conference was Ubisoft’s. Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle was one of the industry’s worst-kept secrets at this point, but that didn’t mean the official reveal itself couldn’t be special. In an interview with Games Industry, Ubisoft E3 lead Leon Winkler talked about what it was like convincing Nintendo and Shigeru himself to go ahead with the presentation.
“When I first pitched that idea with Nintendo, they were not sure and thought it should be more serious. And the idea of having that smoke machine when Miyamoto walked into the auditorium, with the lights in the background… they were like ‘I dunno’. But we said, ‘Just try it out, we’ll do it on site, if he gets enthusiastic about it, we’ll do it’. And on the day he was like ‘Yeah, this is cool’.
Now we have two legends on stage, Miyamoto and Yves, and they have guns. So let’s create the picture of E3 with them back-to-back. That picture was everywhere when people were talking about E3 that year.”
While that is a presentation most won’t forget, it’s what followed after that is arguably the most iconic moment in the annals of E3. While many were delighted to see Miyamoto take the stage, Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle creative director Davide Soliani experienced things on a whole different level. Seeing his game get such a major push from both Nintendo and Ubisoft led Soliani to tearing up, and it’ll forever be looked back on as one of the purest moments in not just E3, but gaming history.
“That’s the cool thing about events; you can show the human side of the work that we do. I could see in rehearsals that Davide was getting emotional, and I thought ‘Maybe we should get a camera moment ready for that’. Because it is important. It humanizes us as an industry. It’s Davide, who has been a Nintendo fan since he was a kid, and now his idol is on stage giving him props… I would cry, too.”
Comments (0)