MTV Multiplayer sat down with, Salvatore Fileccia head software engineer for Banjo Kazooie, and asked him about the Mario cameo in the trailer:

He told me that the Mario figure that gets blasted apart in the trailer was actually a custom vehicle created by one of the developers on the game using the Lego-like vehicle-building editor. As he demoed the game he had stressed that the developers had managed to create many Star Wars vehicles as well.

The Mario vehicle, which looks like a Mario statue, will not be in the final game — though I can’t imagine someone won’t try to create one within hours of the game’s official release.

Fileccia told me that he wasn’t allowed to say much about what happened, but the impression I got was that Rare snuck it into the trailer and got themselves in some hot water. Either that, or this is an intentional buzz-builder.

Check out the newly updated Banjo Kazooie trailer from yesterday. See anything different?

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