Mario+Rabbids: Sparks of Hope
After the Donkey Kong Adventure DLC, I was fortunate to join the talented audio team behind Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope from the very beginning through all three DLCs . The game, released in October 2022, sent Mario and friends on a galactic journey across multiple planets, featuring an eclectic roster of nine heroes and new tactical combat mechanics.
Great responsibilities
As the only technical audio person on the project, I had the chance to define the game’s technical audio direction from the ground up. I established the complete Wwise project structure and provided supervision for all audio feature development in partnership with in-house engineers. Performance was a critical focus: delivering a AAA audio experience on Nintendo Switch required meticulous resource optimization and careful memory and streaming bandwidth management. I also set up a custom voice pipeline for all scripted and systemic dialogue, ensuring consistent delivery across the game’s vast cast of characters.
Audio Design: Heroes and Enemies
On the creative side, I designed audio for most of the female heroes: Peach, Rabbid Peach, and Rabbid Rosalina, including their signature weapons and special powers. I also handled sound design for several sparks (supporting creatures) and new enemies, notably the Scoper (a highly mobile ranged unit with a distinctive two-shot attack and formidable cuteness) and the legendary Goombas making their tactical debut.
Music Integration
With a composer dream team of Grant Kirkhope, Yoko Shimomura, and Gareth Coker on board, the score was praised for its cohesion and emotional range. I was in charge of integrating their adaptive cues to ensure seamless transitions across exploration, battle, and cutscenes. The system was straightforward but effective, letting each composer’s work breathe while keeping the player anchored in the tactical flow.
Musical highlights
Like the first opus, Sparks of Hope features exotic musical props, although they only appear in the Last Spark Hunter DLC, set on the Melodic Gardens with its plant-based musical instruments. To make these a reality, our audio programmer and myself teamed up to redesign the whole system, now able to leverage Wwise’s MIDI capabilities with richly designed fantasy instruments, allowing players to interact with the environment in a musically responsive way.
Another detail that was fun to integrate is the mickey-moused pizzicato footsteps for the Winter Palace Garden stealth puzzle, syncing each footfall while keeping in tune with the background music for playful, cartoon-like precision.
Looking Back
Working on Sparks of Hope from start to finish was a rare gift. What really stays with me is the sheer strangeness of it—spending years polishing a game where Mario shares a battlefield with Rabbids, where Yoko Shimomura (who wrote the Street Fighter themes I grew up on) contributed alongside other heavyweights, where I got to design for characters I’d known since childhood. Being part of that weird, wonderful crossover felt less like work and more like being handed the keys to a toy box I never expected to open.
