Nintendo Content Reportedly Planned For Tokyo Olympics 2020 Opening, Removed At Last Minute

Last week, the Tokyo 2020 Olympics held its opening ceremony, featuring songs from many iconic videogames.

Fans who were watching the ceremony may have noticed that songs from Nintendo titles were conspicuously absent from the lineup, especially after the company played a big role during the handover to Tokyo during the Rio 2016 Olympics closing ceremony.

Since then, Japanese magazine Shunkan Bunshun has published a report claiming they have gained access to 11 past script proposals for the Opening Ceremony, revealing that Nintendo was originally going to play a much bigger role in the events. The plans detail a number of scrapped segments where Nintendo would have been involved, including the following (translated via VGC):

• A return of the Green Warp Pipe from the Rio 2016 Olympics closing ceremony, with Musician Lady Gaga and Japanese comedian Naomi Watanabe taking the place of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
• An extensive sequence inspired by “the 8-bit world of video games” which Shigeru Miyamoto was heavily involved in planning, but was eventually cut around October 2020. Nintendo was suggested to have “mixed feelings” about the cut.
• A draft script from June 16th included plans for five songs from Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon to be included in the opening ceremony gaming music lineup, but these songs were evidently removed for the final cut.

The full article goes on to list the many disruptions and difficulties faced during the planning of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, some of which may or may not have played a part in the removal of Nintendo content from the final show. That said, Nintendo apparently declined to comment on the situation when reached out to by Bunshun.

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