Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle

Mario attacking an enemy Rabbid from behind cover

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is a tactical strategy game in which Mario teams up with his friends; Luigi, Princess Peach, and Yoshi, along with four Rabbids dressed up like them, to battle against enemy Rabbids that hinder their progress.[3] The main single-player campaign has players control a robot named Beep-0 and lead a team of three heroes, including Mario, through four worlds split into multiple chapters, each composed of one or more battles. Along the way, the player can find alternate paths and solve puzzles on the game's overworld to locate hidden chests containing new weapons or bonus material such as 3D models and concept art. As the player progresses through the game, Beep-0 can learn new abilities, such as pushing blocks and carrying statues to access previously inaccessible areas.

Battles take place when the player reaches an enemy-inhabited territory. While most battles typically require the player to eliminate all or a certain number of enemies, some missions feature other objectives such as reaching a specific area or escorting another character. In these turn-based battles, control alternates between the player's team of three heroes and the enemy team. During each turn, players can perform up to three actions with each of their available heroes; Movement, Attack, and Ability. In the movement phase, players move a cursor to direct a character to a place on the field within their movement range. Characters can dash into enemies to deal extra damage, enter white pipes to reach other parts of the map, and leap off of each other to reach otherwise inaccessible areas. Each hero can attack with their main weapon, which range from simple blasters to wide-spreading shotguns, or secondary weapons such as melee weapons or grenades. Certain weapons may trigger status effects, such as dealing extra damage with Bounce or Fire damage or inhibiting certain actions with Freeze or Honey attacks. The effectiveness of an attack varies depending on whether the target is shielded by the environment (for example, characters hiding behind a half-sized wall have a 50% chance of getting hit). Finally, Abilities are unique support effects, ranging from barriers that can lessen damage to overwatch attacks that can be triggered outside of an Attack command. Certain weapons and abilities have cooldowns, requiring players to wait a certain number of turns before they can be used again. Additionally, certain characters possess passive abilities that are unique to them. For example, Peach can recover health upon landing from a team jump while Rabbid Luigi can absorb health from dashing into opponents.

Players lose a battle when all of their heroes run out of health and are knocked out, or fail a level-specific objective. When the player clears a chapter, they receive coins and Skill Orbs, which can also be found by exploring the overworld, with greater rewards earned clearing battles within a certain number of turns with all characters intact. Coins can be spent on new weapons for each character, with more options becoming available as the player finds Weapon Chests. Skill Orbs can be used on each character's Skill Tree, granting them new unique abilities or increases to stats such as health and movement range. After clearing a world, players can revisit them to take on additional challenge-based missions. Players can also unlock co-operative challenges, in which two players, each with a team of two heroes, must work together to clear objectives.[4] Additional weapons can be unlocked by scanning compatible Amiibo figures.[5]

In a certain world, a young inventor and avid Super Mario fan, with the help of her robot assistant Beep-0, has invented a device known as the SupaMerge helmet, which can merge any two objects into a single entity. She invented it with the intention to solve an energy crisis, but the device has a problem with overheating.

While the inventor is out of the room, a group of Rabbids arrive in their Time Washing Machine and begin playing with her things, annoying Beep-0. One of them puts on the SupaMerge helmet and starts causing chaos, merging some of the Rabbids with several items in the room: one with a cell phone and a Princess Peach wig into Rabbid Peach, a second with a balloon into a Rabbid balloon, a third with a Mario hat into Rabbid Mario, and a fourth with some sunglasses and a toy sunflower into a living sunflower. While having fun with the helmet, it accidentally hits the Time Washing Machine and causes a malfunction, sucking the Rabbids and Beep-0 into an interdimensional vortex. At that time, another vortex appears above the Mushroom Kingdom during the unveiling of a large statue of Princess Peach and sucks up everyone, including Mario and his friends. As both Mario's friends and the Rabbids are thrown across the Mushroom Kingdom, Beep-0 discovers that the SupaMerge helmet has merged itself with the Rabbid wearing it, who starts causing more chaos by merging more things. While most of the merged Rabbids become hostile, Mario and Beep-0 encounter two good Rabbids: Rabbid Luigi and Rabbid Peach. Aided by a mysterious e-mail contact known only as F.B. (who also provides them with weapons to help them), the four decide to team up to put a stop to the chaos.

As Mario's team travels across the Mushroom Kingdom, defeating the corrupted Rabbids while also encountering allies both old and Rabbid (consisting of Princess Peach, Luigi, Rabbid Mario, Yoshi, and Rabbid Yoshi), Bowser Jr. comes across the SupaMerged Rabbid, which he nicknames Spawny, and takes him under his wing to cause more chaos. Resolving to recover Spawny so they can undo the damage he has caused, the team eventually learn that an entity known as the Megabug is behind the mysterious vortex, which grows more powerful as they defeat more corrupted Rabbids (including powerful Rabbids consisting of Rabbid Kong, the Icicle Golem, and Phantom). The gang eventually recover Spawny from Bowser Jr., only for him to get kidnapped by the Megabug, who then merges itself with Bowser (who had returned from his vacation) to become MegaDragonBowser. Mario's team defeats the Megabug, saving both Bowser and Spawny. As peace returns to the Mushroom Kingdom and all the Rabbids are restored to normal, Beep-0 comes to the realization that F.B. is actually his future self (F.B. stands for Future Beep-0) and uses the Time Washing Machine to help his comrades in the past by sending the same emails and weapons that his future self sent to him to his past self.[6]

The game's score was written by Grant Kirkhope, a British composer formerly of Rare.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was developed by Ubisoft Milan and Ubisoft Paris using Ubisoft's proprietary Snowdrop game engine.[7][3] After the Japanese release of Just Dance Wii in 2011, Nintendo and Ubisoft began experimenting a concept featuring a new genre with Mario and the Rabbids, in part due to the over 20 year relationship between the companies. According to producer Xavier Manzanare, Ubisoft's Rabbids developers were not going to make another party game due to poor sales of recent entries and "internal fatigue", but felt that the Rabbids characters could bring something unique to other genres of games. Creative director Davide Soliani and the development team (being "tactical fans") proposed creating a turn-based game, but wanted to "stay true to the Mario universe" and developed it with "tactical combat phases with adventure phases" while creating the enemies and tone. Three weeks after an internal pitch meeting, the development team created a playable prototype featuring Mario and Luigi character models recreated from scratch in order to "bring the essence of those two characters", and presented it to Nintendo and Shigeru Miyamoto in Kyoto, Japan. Miyamoto was reportedly impressed, telling the development team he wanted a type of Mario game that was never done before and challenged them to make a Mario game with no platforming.

Although pre-release impressions often compared Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle to the long-running X-COM series of turn-based tactics games (and indeed, X-COM's creator Julian Gollop had been invited to work on the game), Davide Soliani cited Mario Kart as a key inspiration for the design of the game, stating the goal was to make a turn-based tactics game that was not only quick and accessible, but also spectator friendly. Handling the crossover aspect was a challenge: Soliani stated that early on, the team was conscious about "having a balance" between the Mario and Rabbids universes, but were encouraged by Nintendo to "not worry about it" and Miyamoto, who said "Show me your colors. Show me your Rabbids' humor even more. Show me how crazy you can be".

The development team were apprehensive about featuring firearms in a Mario game. To alleviate this, they took inspiration from films with exaggerated weaponry such as the 1997 science fiction film The Fifth Element, which featured plasma-firing arm cannons. Nintendo appreciated their reverence and gave permission to let Mario characters use the guns. Soliani characterized Nintendo as open-minded, stating "Every time you are proposing something crazy to Nintendo, they are quite open-minded. But you need a good justification and a good logic to create something in the Mario universe". The game’s music was composed by Grant Kirkhope, who originally accepted the project without realizing it was a Mario game. Kirkhope had worked for Rare, which developed games for Nintendo during the 1990s before its acquisition by Microsoft in 2002, including the critically acclaimed GoldenEye 007 and Banjo-Kazooie. This is because the game was internally titled RKB, or Rabbids Kingdom Battle. Soliani surprised him after showing gameplay of Mario moving around, wherein he realized he was actually composing music for a Mario game and recalled, "it struck me... how on Earth was I going to write music for Mario after Koji Kondo, who is the greatest games composer in the world? I thought this is impossible. I can't possibly write music for this game, I'm just not good enough". Also, he wrote the song the Phantom in the middle of the game sings.

The game was officially announced at E3 2017 during Ubisoft's press conference, although critical details and promotional images were leaked months in advance and became targets for wary fans. The leaks caused grief among the development team due to the largely negative impression and the aim to keep the game "a big surprise" seemingly ruined, although their fears were assuaged after the game's E3 unveiling was met with a largely positive response.

Information on a crossover between the Mario and Raving Rabbids franchises was leaked as early as November 2016,[8] although the title Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was first leaked in May 2017, prior to its official announcement during Ubisoft's press conference at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2017.[3] The game was released in North America and PAL territories for the Nintendo Switch on 29 August 2017.[7] It was later released in Japan and other East Asian territories on 18 January 2018, courtesy of Nintendo.[1] A collector's edition was also released, which came with a soundtrack CD, cards, and a Rabbid Mario figurine.[9] Ubisoft released post-launch downloadable content through a season pass, which includes new weapons, solo challenges, cooperative maps, and story-based content.[10] On 26 June 2018, an expansion known as Donkey Kong Adventure was released. It includes a new story featuring Rabbid Peach and Beep-0 teaming up with Donkey Kong and Rabbid Cranky to defeat Rabbid Kong, one of the bosses in the game's main storyline.[11]

In the 2018 crossover fighting game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, three of the Rabbids appear as collectable Spirits using their artwork from this title: Rabbid Mario, Rabbid Peach, and Rabbid Kong. A Rabbids hat for Mii Fighters was made available for download in January 2020, with the reveal video using music from and making reference to Kingdom Battle.

Connections forged from Kingdom Battle extend beyond Rabbids references. In January 2019 the game's composer, Grant Kirkhope, was contacted by creative director Davide Soliani asking for his contact information on behalf of Nintendo, saying Nintendo loved what Kirkhope had done for the Mario + Rabbids soundtrack and requested his help on an unspecified piece of music. Kirkhope was initially skeptical on the purpose of this offer but accepted the opportunity anyway. Upon realizing that he was actually being asked to arrange music for Banjo and Kazooie's appearance in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, he was incredibly excited for the return of the characters.[53]

• Text in this article was copied from Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle at the Nintendo wiki, which is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (Unported) (CC-BY-SA 3.0) license.

• Official website