Davide Soliani

Davide Soliani is the Creative Director of Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle at Ubisoft Milan. He has been working as a game designer at Ubisoft since 1997.

Soliani is best known for his appearance in the audience at Ubisoft's E3 2017 press conference when Shigeru Miyamoto revealed the Mario and Rabbids collaboration on stage. When Miyamoto was talking about the project, Soliani was unaware that he would be mentioned by name and was visibly was holding back tears of pride, a touching moment which became a highlight of the show and received international mainstream press coverage. He describes this as an emotional, deeply personal moment for him, as the game had been in development for three and a half years and he was responsible for risks that had been taken with both intellectual properties. The image was also a mini-meme during that period.

Soliani has always been a passionate Nintendo player and is particularly fond of the Mario and Zelda franchises. Throughout his childhood, he was always imaginative, interested in books and role play. He describes his first contact with the Donkey Kong arcade game and later controlling Mario in Super Mario 64 as defining moments. His favourite games of all time are Flashback and Out of this World, amongst others.

Soliani has cited Miyamoto as the person who inspired his career. He first met Miyamoto in Los Angeles at E3 1999, when he had finished development on a Jungle Book game for the Game Boy Color. Soliani was so proud of the game that he wanted to give Miyamoto a copy, but became so nervous when approaching him that he was unable to speak and simply reached out as if he wanted an autograph. Miyamoto is said to have looked at him like he was crazy, saying that it wasn't even a game he created, but signed it regardless.

In 2002, when Soliani discovered Miyamoto was visiting his hometown of Milan to promote The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Game Boy Advance SP, he spent several days ringing around hotels to find out where he was staying. Despite being very sick with a fever, he camped out at the hotel in the rain for 10 hours and gave Miyamoto a package of all the games which had been developed at the Ubisoft Milan studio.

Soliani was also a fan of Rareware and Banjo-Kazooie growing up, which lead him to ask composer Grant Kirkhope to work on the soundtrack for Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. The pair have since built a close friendship over the past two years of development.

Soliani describes himself as a very simple person who just hopes that players enjoy his games. In his spare time, he is a motorcyclist and owns a Honda AT, and is also an amiibo collector.