Here’s The History Behind Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle For Switch

We found out today that Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle for the Nintendo Switch is indeed real and has been in development for three years over at Ubisoft in collaboration with Nintendo. Now we have found out a little more history about how the game’s concept came about and what it was like to work alongside the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto, thanks to a recent interview published by GamesIndustry.biz.

“When me and my team were told to work with Nintendo, with a game that could feature both Mario and the Rabbids, we immediately understood it was a lifetime opportunity,” Soliani says. “We spent night and day working on the best way to merge those two worlds together, and find something unique for both Mario and the Rabbids.

“We did a new genre. As tactical fans, we loved the idea of using them to propose something new for turn-based gaming. A different approach. But at the same time, we wanted to stay true to the Mario universe. That’s why we wanted to mix tactical combat phases with adventure phases. We put together posters, and came up with the enemies and the tone

“Three and a half weeks after that internal meeting, we took the opportunity to create a small prototype and present it to Nintendo. When I finally met Mr Miyamoto, the creator of my favourite game and the inspiration of my whole career, I felt like I was divided in two – the passionate Nintendo player, and the Ubisoft creative director. I was split between the urge to ask for an autograph, and the responsibility to represent the game in the most professional way.

“He told us that he was impressed, so it went well, but he kept asking us how it was possible for us to have Mario and Luigi in our game, because they look identical to the Nintendo ones. But the truth is, even if we had just three and a half weeks to come up with that prototype, we decided to recreate Mario and Luigi from scratch. We looked at all the Nintendo games we could, to make sure we translated their essence into our game. And I do believe that it was in that precise moment that we truly convinced Nintendo about our passion and our commitment. ”

“After that, everything happened at light speed. We met the Nintendo guys with Kyoto several times, and we flew up with code”.

You can read the full interview with the team and even composer Grant Kirkhope, here.