Hahaha
, I saw this on live TV - the part at Rio Olympics' closing ceremony where the Japanese contingent put on quite a show
by starting out with Japan's current PM donning on a
Mario hat and masquerading as
Super Mario and then, funnily enough, entering through
a Nintendo-themed green pipe to get to Rio on time!
Note: Lots of these articles have video clips too.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/olympics ... o-costume/ (11:33 AM; August 22 by Des Bieler)
Japanese Prime Minister Arrives at Rio Olympics As Super Mario (Matt Kim. August 21, 2016. Headline:
"Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announces the Summer 2020 Tokyo Games Cosplaying as the famous video game hero.")
Watch Japan's Prime Minister morph into Mario for the Olympics' closing ceremony (By Rich McCormick. Aug 21, 2016, 11:03p.)
WATCH: The Prime Minister of Japan as Super Mario in Rio (Published 10:30 pm EDT, August 21, 2016. By Jessica McBride.)
Tokyo 2020 - Mario is comming (Video. Published on Aug 21, 2016)
Excerpts from The Verge's article:
Quote:
Countries lean heavily on national stereotypes during their Olympic ceremonies. ... For Japan, the next host of the summer games completing the handover in Rio de Janeiro tonight, it was video games.
...
The clip emphasizes the significance of video games and animated characters in Japan's projection of itself — in addition to Mario, Japan's athletes were joined by Pac-Man, Hello Kitty, and the aforementioned Doraemon.
Pretty sad that Satoru Iwata wouldn't be alive to see it open. All our hearts break a bit
.
* EDIT (19/10/2016): I was just reading a
new grand retrospective about the PC HD remaster of the never-localized PSX game
The Silver Case and I found some stunning answers to questions from the game's developer Goichi Suda (Suda51) like so:
Quote:
Q: Are you looking forward to the Tokyo Olympics?
A: ...
Hopefully she’ll be able to do a lot of good not just for Tokyo, but help make the Olympics a lot better than they probably would’ve been without her. One thing I want to say is that Prime Minister [Shinzo] Abe coming out of the warp pipe at the Brazil closing ceremonies? That shouldn’t have been him. It should’ve been [Nintendo's Shigeru] Miyamoto instead.
What chutzpah!