If Nintendo hadn’t decided to pull out of the opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at the last minute, we would have seen more about video games at the ceremony. According to Japan’s Shukan Bunshun magazine, the magazine has received script proposals prepared by Nintendo for the Tokyo 2020 opening ceremony, which suggests nintendo has made some plans for the ceremonies that will delight gamers.
But Nintendo, as you know, wasn’t at the opening ceremony. Instead, during the transitions of the countries, we listened to the famous soundtracks of various games developed in Japan. You can find the full list of these musics in our previous news.
At the closing ceremony of Rio 2016, Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, emerged from one of those famous pipes at the game in his Super Mario costume. Naturally, we expected to see these and other iconic characters at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
According to the plans, the ceremony will also feature Nintendo-sourced music such as Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda and Pokemon, but they were also removed from the list when the plans were abandoned. At one point, it was even planned that Lady Gaga would show up with Mario’s hat, then Mario would disappear into his famous pipe and be replaced by Japanese comedian Naomi Watanebe. This could be a funny scene.
Nintendo’s recent withdrawal of these plans has been played by both the fact that the Tokyo 2020 games received serious criticism in Japan due to rising coronavirus cases (so some sponsors backed down) and nintendo’s change of creative director after the Olympics were postponed by a year, and that new director Hiroshi Sasaki (who later resigned as a result of a scandal) wanted to make serious changes to the plans.
