E3 2017 is arguably the last great show that the now-defunct gaming show had. Or, at least, it is in the eyes of Nintendo fans. At that show, Nintendo dropped all kinds of news about the Switch and the games it would get in 2017 and beyond. Both first- and third-party developers showed up to reveal some of the upcoming special titles, with one of the biggest and most famous being Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. The game had previously leaked online, and few believed it was real for multiple reasons. Then, during the Ubisoft E3 2017 press conference, everything changed.
Not only was the game revealed, but Shigeru Miyamoto himself, the creator of Mario, joined Ubisoft’s CEO on stage to showcase the title and take an iconic picture of the two leaders back to back, holding the special weapons from the game. It was a fun and unique moment that we likely won’t get again, thanks to the current state of presentations. However, in a special piece about the “Life and Death of E3” by GameIndustry.Biz, the person who helped make that moment happen, Leon Winkler, said that Nintendo almost nixed it so that they could have a more “serious” reveal announcement:
“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.”
Between that announcement and the time the game spent in the Nintendo Treehouse event that soon followed, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was one of the must-have games on the Nintendo Switch that year. The game’s sales proved that the collaboration was worth it, as it sold over 10 million units in its lifetime and then got a sequel in 2022!
But going back to the moment at E3 2017, that show was all about having fun and being bold, so going “serious” for a game that featured Mario teaming up with the Rabbids would’ve been…the wrong tone.
