AN new website for Nintendo next Japanese Super Nintendo World theme park aired yesterday. It featured new details and a virtual tour of the video game wonderland before it opened on February 4. He also used an image of Mario on his loading screen that appears to have been created not by Nintendo, but by one of his fans.
“I love how Nintendo used MY old ass Mario render on the official Nintendo World website,” Twitter user and Mario fan ujiidow tweeted earlier today. Mario’s image was created about three years ago using the open source animation software Blender and was shared on Reddit at the time. The Mario model used for the render was not from Nintendo, but belonged to 3D artist RafaKnight, who shared it for download on his Patreon in 2017.
Neither Nintendo nor Universal Studios Japan responded immediately to a request for comment.
Now the image appears to be on the front page of Universal Studios Japan’s website for a theme park inspired by one of the most protective and contentious intellectual property holders in the video game industry. (Just this week, the game distribution site GameJolt was hit with a DMCA notice from Nintendo targeting hundreds of free fan-made projects based on the company’s IP.)
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The potential irony was not lost on the subreddit r / gaming, who shared ujiidow’s discovery on a topic disrupting Nintendo, which received more than 60,000 votes in favor. A post on the subject about on NintendoLife shows ujiidow rendering side by side with a standard version of Mario with which it is similar. Although both look almost identical at first, it becomes clear after closer inspection that ujiidow is much more detailed, especially around shading.
Ujiidow is not necessarily complaining. “I’m so used to rendering Mario getting very little attention,” they said Kotaku in an email. “I was told to take action on the matter, but I think it is very good to finally have some recognition about it.”
You can find some of his fan art at your DeviantArt page. One of the latest parts is a version of Cyberpunk 2077The art box that replaces your main character V with a grayer and more armed Mario. Other shows modern Mario and one of Mario 64 exchanging glances while swimming in a pool of water.
Ujiidow said he contacted Universal Studios about the image, but has yet to respond. In the meantime, they took the whole situation as a compliment. “For my rendering to be mistaken for an official shows that I’m doing something right here.”