"Three and a half weeks after that internal meeting, we took the opportunity to create a small prototype and present it to Nintendo. When I finally met Mr Miyamoto, the creator of my favourite game and the inspiration of my whole career, I felt like I was divided in two - the passionate Nintendo player, and the Ubisoft creative director. I was split between the urge to ask for an autograph, and the responsibility to represent the game in the most professional way.
"He told us that he was impressed, so it went well, but he kept asking us how it was possible for us to have Mario and Luigi in our game, because they look identical to the Nintendo ones. But the truth is, even if we had just three and a half weeks to come up with that prototype, we decided to recreate Mario and Luigi from scratch. We looked at all the Nintendo games we could, to make sure we translated their essence into our game. And I do believe that it was in that precise moment that we truly convinced Nintendo about our passion and our commitment. "