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Watch this live Nintendo concert featuring holograms of K.K. Slider and Splatoon 3’s idols

Watch this live Nintendo concert featuring holograms of K.K. Slider and Splatoon 3’s idols

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If this actually toured, I’d be there in a heartbeat.

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Move over, Spotify Wrapped. My favorite music thing on the internet this week is Nintendo’s official English translation of its Splatoon 3 and Animal Crossing concert with holograms of the characters from the games.

The concert, starring the musical dog K.K. Slider as a DJ and the idol superstars from Splatoon 3, originally took place at the Japan-only Nintendo Live 2022 event in October. I watched it after the fact, thanks to generous fans who had uploaded the livestreamed concert, but the characters’ subtitles were in Japanese.

The music rocks. For the first half of the show, DJ K.K. plays a bunch of remixes of his songs from the Animal Crossing series that are easy to bob your head along to. Then, Deep Cut brings down the house with songs from Splatoon 3 performed by a live band. (I’m absolutely in love with Splatoon 3’s soundtrack, so I might be biased.)

The official English translation is right in line with what you might expect if you’ve played the games. Isabelle the dog has a charming introduction from the office you might be familiar with from Animal Crossing: New Horizons, while Shiver, Frye, and Big Man from Splatoon 3’s fictional Deep Cut band have lots of witty banter. Don’t worry, the characters still actually speak in their respective made-up gibberish languages.

In both acts, characters dance onstage as holograms, and at least in the video, the effect is really impressive. You can almost believe that they’re actually there. The audience is filled with people waving light wands around, which adds to the festive concert atmosphere.

If this show actually toured, I’d be there in a heartbeat. But for now, I’ll have to be content with this video.