When a person who’s now well-beyond his or her first mid-life crisis tells you they played Mario in virtual reality on PlayStation, you have to roll your eyes in bewilderment. Even if said person is Steven Spielberg, who’s just launched an exciting Ready Player One movie that takes place in VR.
You also have to wonder what that really means, because, let’s face it, it all sounds pretty exciting. Is Mario ready for VR? Is Nintendo ready to launch a Mario experience for VR complete with some sort of headgear?? Is Mario — wait for it — coming to Sony’s PlayStation???
Here’s what Spielberg told Japanese news agency Kyodo, via The Verge:
I played Mario and so on on the PlayStation. The first time I tried it I didn’t want to take the goggles off.
We’ve got a few versions of what’s true from that statement.
In one scenario, the famed director did play a VR game on a PlayStation, and that the experience was so mind-bending that he simply wanted more. It’s also possible that the game looked a lot like Nintendo’s Mario. But it surely wasn’t.
On the other hand, if Spielberg did play a Mario game in VR, then it can only be Mario Kart Arcade GP VR, which is only available in Japan. But this game requires an HTC Vive, not a PlayStation. That’s also an experience not available to regular gamers. You have to travel to Japan to enjoy it.
The simplest explanation, however, is that his comments were not accurately represented by Kyodo and that Spielberg knows exactly what Mario and the PlayStation are.
