This week, Nintendo had its annual “Nintendo Direct,” the presentation where they reveal new games, exciting system updates, and any other news they deem big enough to announce in front of a sold-out crowd. This year’s direct featured a new look at Metroid Prime 4, More Dragon Quest remakes, and, oddly enough, multiple insistences that Yoshi, the dinosaur character from the Super Mario franchise, isn’t real.
Early in the presentation, before getting to any new games or Switch 2 news, Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser jokingly mentioned Yoshi, saying “who obviously is a fictional character, as well all know,” before chuckling in a way we felt could be considered nervously.
The joke seemed like pure non-sequitur, until Bowser hurried back onto the stage between the debut trailer of the new Metroidvania Shadow Labyrinth and a look at the gameplay of Disney Villains Cursed Cafe. He looked sweatier and more shaken than when he started the direct, and almost immediately refocused his attention to this weird Yoshi tangent.
“Doesn’t that look great, folks? Yeah… yeah it should be cool… hey, we all love Yoshi, right? I mean, he’s technically a very large prehistoric creature that loves to swallow humans whole and then keep on smiling. Kind of a little scary, right? Haha, or it would be if he was real, which he’s not. No, no, that wouldn’t be good at all.”
Nintendo Directs are semi known for their weird or cheesy attempts at humor and Japanese translation issues, so this strange ramble didn’t seem like such a big deal to us, but then Bowser brought it up yet again while narrating over a new gameplay demo of Tamagotchi Plaza.
“And you’ll notice with these new features, feeding your Tamagotchi has never been easier. You just need to… He’s just a made up cartoon. We wouldn’t make him in a lab. We know that would be a huge mistake that could go horribly wrong. Sure, there are people who think a real one might be great for marketing and kids would love it, but you have to understand that the risks far outweigh the potential… We had no way to know he would do that. We have to get them out of the eggs. Haha, I’m talking about the game. Nothing real, of course. What game was this, again?”
Bowser’s distracted pivot was confounding at first, but after further contemplation, we believe it only logically makes sense that he is still talking about Yoshi. A very weird choice for this year’s direct, that we can only hope doesn’t need any deeper looking into.
