Nintendo has fleetingly dropped some bombshell announcements on its Nintendo Today app, but the most recent drop is a real head-scratcher.
The gaming company shared a video on the app simply titled “Close to You,” also uploading it on YouTube shortly after. Comments are turned off on YouTube, and the video description simply repeats the video title.
The animated video runs for almost four minutes and doesn’t explicitly tie into any video game announcement; instead, it’s a cute short film about a baby attempting to retrieve their pacifier.
The pacifier darts and floats around, almost like it’s being carried or pulled by some invisible force. Eventually, the baby stands up on both feet to (presumably) take their first steps in pursuit of the pacifier. The video is bookended by the Nintendo logo, in case you completely forgot who was responsible for this short film as you were watching it.
Is this an indication that Nintendo is branching out into animated films on its own? Is it a cryptic teaser for a game yet to be officially announced? Is it a tie-in to another collaboration with Illumination? Whatever the case, that baby’s mother should’ve cleaned that pacifier before putting it back in her child’s mouth, because that thing must be really dirty after being all over the room.
Sharp ears will notice around 29 seconds in that the piano score resembles a musical cue from the Pikmin series. Some observers also believe that the baby resembles Rosalina from the Super Mario series and that the short is related to The Super Mario Galaxy Movie from Illumination. Whether this video is related to either IP or if these are complete coincidences is uncertain at this time. Nintendo has always been a strange company, but this video really takes the cake.
While it’s unclear who exactly animated this short video, Nintendo does have a division called Nintendo Pictures, which specializes in animation. Before the studio (originally called Dynamo Pictures) was acquired and renamed by Nintendo in 2022, the studio produced a series of animated Pikmin short films. Bizarrely, the most recent credited work by Nintendo Pictures is a contribution to Death Stranding 2: On the Beach.
Don’t worry: Nintendo still makes video games– the company even used the Nintendo Today app to reveal the spin-off game Splatoon Raiders, and the Nintendo Switch 2 still has some exciting games coming up this year, such as Pokemon Legends: Z-A and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond.
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