Here’s the art that might have inspired Miyamoto’s “Samurai Mario”

There’s a ton of speculation in places like the Nintendo Switch subreddit about just what was going on with Miyamoto’s “samurai Mario” shirt on Jimmy Fallon. I haven’t had time to read through much of anything outside of Polygon’s post on this mysterious Tease-Shirt but at first sight the above is all I could think of.

It’s from one of the final Club Nintendo rewards before the service was shut down in lieu of My Nintendo. It’s probably the classiest thing they ever produced for the U.S. and, ironically, it’s full of Mario & Co. in traditional/mythical Japanese attire. The samurai outfit isn’t quite exact to Miyamoto’s shirt but the designs for the calendar (which was potentially conceived 2 or more years ago) may well have been the inspiration for whatever is coming.

I’ve got no fully formed theories to throw out there, I just wanted to share this fantastic artwork since that shirt reminded me of it. Click to take a much bigger look at it.