Nintendo's marketing often features sizzle reels, those familiar Mario and Luigi costumes with enormous feed and heads, and plenty of quirky moments that try to emphasize silly fun. What the company perhaps could to more of is off-the-wall content with the potential to go viral, which makes its latest effort rather refreshing.
Nintendo of America has released a mockumentary (mock documentary, of course!) called Finding Luigi - Legend of Parkour. When we stumbled across this elsewhere an initial assumption was that it was a fan video, but it's a first-party effort. Featuring some athletes from the Parkour world along with some actors and the occasional internet celeb, this traces the story of the enigmatic hero of the Parkour scene — Luigi, aka L-Man.
This is pretty well done, and has accumulated nearly 30,000 views in around two days. Check it out and let us know what you think.
[source destructoid.com]
Comments 48
Hmm, whys it unlisted?
that was unusual
Odd, but amazing for the man in green!
Just for fun
Okay, Nintendo... thanks... but maybe take some resources and release 'Luigi's Mansion' on Wii U VC. Not only would fans love to see a Gamecube title, ANY Gamecube title on the service, but it would ben actual gaming release during HIS year.
I want Buttercup's coffee mug.
lols
My name's Bruce, not Buttercup... and start reading my e-mails......
That is the one of the weirdest ads I've ever seen... And I loved every minute of it it would be so cool to do parkour like that
that was fun
I want that Yoshi Balloon!
...awesome film, btw!
strange strange
@sleepinglion Correct me if I'm wrong but is there anything left to release that could tie to the year of luigi (beside mario 3d world)?
I agree, it would be a perfect fit! People loved luigi's mansion 2 and value for the first one is going up, people want to play it!
But I can't shake the feeling that nintendo will try to keep gamecube games away from VC, and instead release them as HD remakes... or if not wait a long time to do so. Heck, we're still waiting for GBA on 3DS!
Oh, and cool video by the way!
That was a lot of fun! If you really think about it, platforming in a video game is a lot like "free running" or Parkour. Plus, those costumes were epic!
That combined two of my favorite activities- parkour and video games! FANTASTIC!
Enormous feed and heads?
Anyway, lol at Nabbit and the Yoshi balloon. I'm sure many nabbit and luigi cosplayers will use this.
Unexpected but fun. Professional parkour is sick!
that was fun to watch
Instead of doing this they should release on Wii U virtual console Luigi's Mansion.There's a lot of reasons to do it. It's the year of Luigi,the release of Luigi's Mansion 2 and finally it was the first Gamecube game so it would be cool it it was also the first Gamecube game On Wii U
What if they just made the mario and luigi platformers about pure parkour.
@BrightBeing Kind-of and kind-of not on the whole "Parkour is like Platforming games!" thing. While both involve movement through an environment, parkour is more about being efficient in the use of that movement while platforming games are more about the movement itself. Now, comparing the act of performing a speedrun of a game to parkour is a bit more apt, as they both focus on navigating an environment and efficiency.
@V8_Ninja I hardly think doing flips over a concrete barrier is "efficient", but you might be right in your speed run comparison.
Haha that was pretty good I love that Luigi is the man all of a sudden!
Great video and really funny and now i would like to have an corn dog
Thats was pretty awesome, i want that Nabbit costume .
What I always loved about this stuff are how some of my favorite youtubers get on these videos. I'm always like OH! There is Andre, Jirard, Greg, Jared, etc. it is so funny.
Saw this. Was expecting something glorious, and actually cleverly funny, but I was disappointed.
I then realized it was Nintendo Of America, and not a Japanese project. Now it makes sense.
uh, ok it's a long ad by Nintendo and it's not horribly cheesy and misguided as to it's audience.... But it's not very good, not very funny and still doesn't sell us anything. A step in the right direction I guess. The shooting is not very good either, (even assuming you want it to look rough and 'indie'). Advertising is one of the places where Nintendo has pretty much failed repeatedly (except some of the Wii Ads which like everything else Wii was a wonderful anomaly)
@Ren I agree. The documentary was boring and doesn't really advertise anything... If you're not a die hard Nintendo fan you will not sit down and watch that video. They really need to step it up with their advertising. They have so much money but don't seem to be spending it wisely.
@Thomas_Whitehead Like Morphtorok said, I think "feed and heads" was supposed to be "feat and heads." (Top paragraph)
Good thing stuff like this isn't shown as a commercial!
@John-San3 Every time I see a comment of yours that references America, it's always negatively. Do you just hate the country as a whole...?
Awsome! I like the fact that Luigi is getting mad love.
@MathRaph Thanks, man! I'm glad other Luigi's Mansion fans would enjoy seeing it get some Wii U eShop VC love. I think you're right, though, HD releases may be their ultimate goal. It's a shame, I bet the Wii U could still make Gamecube titles look pretty spiffy =)
@sleepinglion I agree. I don't know if you've noticed, but I've even seen a huge step forward in the last updates with the image quality in wii mode. At launch it looked awful on my screen, all blurry and stretched out beyond screen limits. But now it's MUCH better. The image is crisper, at the right "size", and no deformations whatsoever. So yeah, a simple VC port of gamecube games would be ok I guess.
On the other hand, seeing how gorgeous the WindWaker remaster looks, I wouldn't mind the same thing with luigi's mansion or mario sunshine
But with nintendo you never know... after ocarina and star fox I thought we would see N64 ports for 3DS on a regular basis, but to my knowledge there's not been anything since (excepted DK Country Returns from the Wii).
That was classic! My son loves watching parkour, and we love Luigi! Kudos to the creators!
I thought it was pretty cute.
@Arkhamael Well, I didn't know I had comment that offten, to the point where folks remember my comments But oh well.
Actually, I'm just commenting on the fact that, in most cases, the level of creativity, and intricacy of Japanese media content--not limited to games only, but also marketing in general/advertisement "industry"--trumps those of western content. I mean, take a walk around some of Japan's major cities, and you'll realize this. A colorful, lively, and exciting environment.
They know how to leave an impression, a mark. TV Shows, adverts, even the simplest urban elements, and trust me, it shows in video-games as well.
I think I saw JoshJepson in that video! Awesome!
Radical! That was quite fun to watch, funny & the parkour was very epic. Go Luigi, go!
Wii U, the mythical console of the streets.
COOL
@sleepinglion Luigi's Mansion 2 and NSLU are not enough?
Don't you feel like more will be too much just in one year?
Because i do. xD
@Senario you hit in the nail
awesome! i guess sonic isn't the only one doing parkour XD
I liked it overall, but kind of think they should have just stopped at the end of the documentary part. I feel like the parts with the guys looking for Luigi were kind of forced and the acting wasn't that great.
This is great, and it's just the thing that Nintendo needs to be doing to court the next generation of gamers. Kids these days don't want to buy games from stuffy suit-men they want to be pals with the corporations they finance and Nintendo has learned this.
Not bad! Not bad at all!!
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