Mario Rabbids: Sparks of Hope: How gaming firm Ubisoft mashed 'Rabbids' into 'Mario' world
It took 300 staff working in five cities about five years, but the second edition of one of the most ambitious mash-ups in video games is set to arrive on Thursday -- "Mario Rabbids: Sparks of Hope".
The game merges Nintendo's Mario, the Italian plumber who has given his name to an entire universe of games, with Ubisoft's Rabbids, a series focused on the adventures of a species of screeching, hyperactive rabbit-like animals.
Nintendo, like other media companies, is highly protective of its creations.
Only fellow Japanese studio Sega has been entrusted with characters from "Mario" before, for special editions games celebrating the Olympic Games where they compete with "Sonic the Hedgehog".
"Nintendo told us very early on: 'This is your game, this is your vision, we respect it,'" Ubisoft's Xavier Manzanares, who is overseeing the new game's development, told AFP.
"That's where it's interesting, so we had real creativity, really interesting room for manoeuvre."
The first game in the series, "Mario Rabbids: Kingdom Battle", has garnered more than 10 million players since its release in 2017, said Manzanares.
"I don't think we would have bet on that in 2017," he said.
"It attracted a lot of attention because there are not many brands that do a pair-up with 'Mario', that's for sure."
The idea of fictional universes colliding -- characters from one popping up in another -- is far more developed in cinema franchises and comic books than in video games.
Superheroes, for example, have a long history of showing up in a rival's storylines.
In video games, Nintendo has created mash-ups featuring its own characters, like the "Super Smash Bros" series that brought together the likes of Pikachu, Donkey Kong and others.
Occasionally two studios join
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