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Steven Spielberg says he’s played Mario on a PlayStation in VR

Steven Spielberg says he’s played Mario on a PlayStation in VR

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'Ready Player One' European Premiere - Red Carpet Arrivals
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Steven Spielberg has made a surprising revelation in an interview with Japanese news agency Kyodo. When asked whether he’d played any VR games — an obvious question given the theme of his latest movie, Ready Player One — the legendary director answered “I played Mario and so on on the PlayStation. The first time I tried it I didn’t want to take the goggles off.”

Did Spielberg just leak the existence of a shocking tie-up between Nintendo and Sony? Is Mario really coming to PlayStation, and in VR no less?

Well, almost certainly not. Which makes me wonder what Spielberg is talking about. Here are some of the possibilities that come to mind:

  • Spielberg played something on the PlayStation VR that he thought was a Mario game. There aren't really many platformers on PSVR, however, nor any games starring Italian plumbers as far as I know.
  • Spielberg played a Mario-like game on some other VR platform. Lucky's Tale on the Oculus Rift, maybe?
  • Spielberg played this unofficial Mario HoloLens game. (Unlikely.)
  • Spielberg tracked down a Nintendo Virtual Boy and played Mario Clash or Mario's Tennis. (This is the least likely, given how mindblowing he said the experience was.)
  • Spielberg went to Tokyo, played the official, awesome Mario Kart VR game, and thought the Vive-plus-racing-chair setup was a PlayStation. (Maybe this.)

There's also the least entertaining option, which is that he said something along the lines of “I played something like Mario on a PlayStation or whatever” and the answer got lost in translation. Perhaps we'll never know.

Spielberg couldn't immediately be reached for comment.