Nintendo has long been the king of unpredictability, but today’s behavior defied all possible predictions. A short video went live this morning hyping an unannounced game with the title “Emio.” The twist? It looks creepy. Unsettling. Possibly M-rated even! No campy Luigi’s Marion style spooks here. This is a horror game. The teaser lasts just 15 seconds, and depicts grainy, shaky footage of a man standing still with a bag over his head. A crude smile is drawn on the bag. Aside from some off-key music, that’s about all there is to go on. But this isn’t exactly the next Mario Party. We realize it’s not unprecedented for Nintendo to publish horror titles. Everyone knows about Eternal Darkness on the Gamecube and Fatal Frame on the Wii. But these things were second and third party products, ideas brought forth by the studios who made them, not Nintendo themselves. By contrast, all indication seems to be that “Emio” is coming straight from Nintendo, as a first-party game. The Kanji displayed in
