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The majority of Super Mario 35th anniversary ads airing in Japan feature a snippet of the song “Create” by the Japanese artist Gen Hoshino. The full song released today, and it turns out pretty much every single lyric has some kind of Nintendo connection.
The song makes many allusions to the Japanese phrase “dokusou” (独創) or “creativity/originality”. This is the exact same phrase that is fundamental to the principles of Nintendo, and was prominently on display behind Iwata on many a direct.
Speaking of Iwata, the word “Direct” appears prominently amongst the lyrics of the song, and the artist even does the Iwata gesture when singing it.
The lyrics go so hardcore as to allude to sayings that Iwata made during previous investor meetings. Some lyrics even make subtle references to Gunpei Yokoi’s philosophy of the “lateral use of withered technology”.
There are also a lot of fun surface level references, such as doing the Mario pose, various release dates of prominent games/hardware being displayed, and Nintendo sound effects playing over the song.
Probably my favorite lyric is: “take the flower handed to you, and change destiny”.
BUT! With a clever little bit of Japanese wordplay, this phrase can also become “take the hanafuda card handed to you, and change destiny”
BUT! With a clever little bit of Japanese wordplay, this phrase can also become “take the hanafuda card handed to you, and change destiny”
It’s beautiful
