A new website for Nintendo next Japanese Super Nintendo World theme park was put into operation yesterday. It included new details and a virtual tour of the wonderland of the video game before its opening on February 4th. He also used an image of Mario for the loading screen that looks like it wasn’t created by Nintendo, but by one of his fans.
“I love how Nintendo used the rendering of my old Mario ass on its official Nintendo World website,” ujiidow, a Twitter user and Mario fan artist has tweeted before today. His image of Mario was created about three years ago with the open source animation software Blender and shared on Reddit at the time. The Mario model used for the rendering was not one of Nintendo’s, but belonged to 3D artist RafaKnight, who shared it to download to the Patreon in 2017.
Neither Nintendo nor Universal Studios Japan immediately responded to a request for comment.
Now the image seems to be on the front page of the Universal Studios Japan website for a theme park inspired by one of the most protective and litigious IP holders in the video game industry. (Just this week, the GameJolt game distribution website was a hit a Nintendo DMCA notice targeted at hundreds of free fan-made projects based on the company’s IP.)
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The potential irony was not lost with the subreddit of r / gaming, who shared the discovery of ujiidow in a brazenly roasted thread from Nintendo, which has been voted more than 60,000 times. A publication on the subject come in NintendoLife shows the ujiidow rendering side by side with a standard version of Mario to which it is similar. While both look almost identical at first, it’s clear if you check more closely that Ujiidow’s is much more detailed, especially around the shadow.
However, Ujiidow does not necessarily complain. “I’m so used to my interpretation of Mario having very little attention,” they said Kotaku in an email. “I’m being told to take action on it, but I think it’s very good to finally have some recognition.”
You can find some of his fan artists below your DeviantArt page. One of the newer pieces is a version of Cyberpunk 2077box art that replaces its main character V with a grayer, grayer Mario. Another shows the modern Mario and one of Mario 64 trader looks swimming in a pool of water.
Ujiidow said they contacted Universal Studios about the image, but have not yet learned. In the meantime, they have taken the whole situation as a compliment. “For my interpretation to be confused with an official one shows that I’m doing something right here.”