“Itʼs hard because youʼre taking the ergonomics of a character thatʼs an inch tall, like Mario, and then youʼre trying to fit a human inside this character. “I say this with a fair amount of confidence: Kathy has built hundreds, if not thousands, of mascots since the early ʼ70s, and one of the most difficult costumes – if not the most difficult – was Pikachu,” Fireball says.
While the production was far less intensive than later commercials that the Lawrences worked on, it was their first time working with Nintendo, which, according to the couple, was very strict about how its characters were portrayed. Set to The Turtles’ “Happy Together,” the promotional video mashes up N64 gameplay clips with footage of mascots – Mario, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Pikachu – beating the hell out of each other on a grassy field.Ī large film crew, led by director Mark Story, completed the half-day shoot at Walt Disney Studios’ ranch in California. A few years after establishing their company, an ad agency called Leo Burnett Worldwide approached Kathy and Fireball to work on the very first Super Smash Bros.
