What exactly is Nintendo trying to reveal with this creepy video of the smiling man?

A new teaser trailer for something called Emio is already one of the strangest things Nintendo has ever done. On Wednesday, the family-friendly game maker dropped a 15-second teaser that centers around a creepy mystery man wearing a smiling paper bag mask. It’s disturbing enough that Nintendo has marked the video as age-restricted and in some countries the trailer was preceded by a warning that it “contains scenes that some viewers may find disturbing.”

The only other thing seen in the video, other than the creepy man in the trench coat, is the kanji 笑み男, which means emio, or “smiling man.”

Nintendo fans are wondering who Emio is, with some joking that it’s edgy viral marketing for the Switch 2 or speculating that it’s a first-party Nintendo horror game. Of course, Hideo Kojima’s name is mentioned, because teasers are his specialty. (Kojima is already busy with Death Stranding 2, ODAnd Physint.)

Outside of the spooks-played-for-laughs Luigi’s Mansion series, Nintendo rarely ventures into horror. The most prominent examples of Nintendo exploring the genre are M-rated games like Eternal Darkness: The Requiem of Sanity And Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Waterboth of which were developed by third parties and published by Nintendo. Some Nintendo fans have already begun speculating that Emio could be something new from Koei Tecmo’s Fatal Frame team, but there is no solid evidence to support that.

Emio could also be a project from Bloober Team, developer of the Silent Hill 2 remake and the Layers of Fear series. Bloober said in 2023 that it was working on a new game codenamed Project M with studio Draw distance which was developed for Nintendo platforms. Draw Distance has since removed from that projectwhich is now being worked on by Bloober Team under a subsidiary called Broken Mirror Games. That subsidiary has only one post on social media, a congratulatory message to Nintendo which also contains a piece of mysterious concept art.

With the Nintendo Switch nearing the end of its lifespan, perhaps the folks behind Mario and The Legend of Zelda have decided to get a little crazy and throw the console’s aging audience a few curveballs. Either way, when it comes to viral marketing, it’s already working.