Mario Kart just got a serious upgrade and it involves real-life street cruising
MARIO KART is one of the latest franchises to arrive on the Nintendo Switch, but for some, the game has literally past them by.
Mario Kart sightings are high in Tokyo
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is a popular new game for the Nintendo Switch which was recently ported over from the original Wii U version.
And having sold well around the world, it has especially proven popular in Japan.
So it might not be that surprising to hear that people are getting together and driving around locations like Tokyo, dressed as their favourite characters.
And it just so happens that Hugh Jackman - star of the Xmen franchise among others - ran into a group bazzing around town on some nifty looking karts, while waiting at some stoplights.
“We’re here waiting for the green light and we’re in Tokyo, and who's going… Oh it’s Mario Kart,” Jackman comments during the short clip.
Jackman points out Princess Peach and Bowser before the intrepid kart drivers head off into the city traffic.
But this isn’t just a one-off occurrence involving a celebrity in Japan, this is a thing that’s been happening a lot.
For anyone interested in doing the same, there’s a company that arranges these sorts of events.
MariCar is a company that offers Mario Kart-inspired public go-kart tours, which came under scrutiny earlier this year.
Nintendo allegedly filed a lawsuit based on MariCar renting “unlicensed versions” of characters.
There was also the issue of MariCar being reportedly too close to the trademarked “Mario Kart.”
However, according to an update from the Japan Times, The Japanese Patent Office has since dismissed the objection filed by Nintendo.
We're here waiting for the green light and ohhhhh ..... #mariokart #supermariobros pic.twitter.com/zyI2eHv9rp
— Hugh Jackman (@RealHughJackman) May 24, 2017
This is based on the judgement that MariCar is not widely recognized as an abbreviation of Mario Kart, and was “an unassociated trademark.”
More information regarding Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was released this month, confirming that Nintendo Switch’s latest big release has sold over 550,000 copies in the United States.
This is likely connected to the great sales of the console, but also the surprising driving force of Mario Kart 8 itself, which has already been dubbed a “mega-hit” for the new gaming machine.
Other Nintendo related news points to everything going well for the 3DS brand as well, with 68,000 units sold during the same span of time as the above Switch data.
More impressively, according to NPD data of combined Switch and 3DS sales reaching 348,000, this means that Nintendo hardware "makes up almost half of all hardware sales across all dedicated video game systems.”