One of the most magical amusement parks on the planet and a special place if you’re a fan of video games is located in Tokyo. This is Super Nintendo World, a place where you can enjoy the wealth of Nintendo features. However, you can enjoy the Nintendo universe outside the park, especially on the city streets, with a kart in the purest Mario Kart style.

Wait, can I roam the streets of one of the most populous cities on the planet using a kart from a video game dressed as Super Mario or a superhero? Yes, but the days of this activity that Nintendo and the Japanese hate may be numbered. Why? So many stumbles on justice and… so many accidents.

Mario is a national icon. If you like video games, you probably know a character like Super Mario very well, but if you’ve never had a controller in your hand, it’s quite possible that you know this friendly puppet. It’s something like Mickey Mouse, a ‘doll’ who transcends the industry to which he belongs and becomes not only the hero of a successful movie, but also part of the image of Japan.

And no, I’m not going too far when I say this: At the closing ceremony of the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe emerged from a pipe dressed as Super Mario – like the character in his games. announcing that the next event will be Tokyo 2020. If that isn’t making a video game character a part of popular culture, I don’t know what is.

Mario Kart Tokyo. And of course, in the Nintendo universe of video games, Mario does a lot of things; One of his epics focuses on karting. Considering all this, a few years ago companies offering karting trips on the streets of Japan became popular. Price? Approximately 100 Euros for a one and a half/two hour journey.

It is one of the most touristy activities in Tokyo and basically consists of driving a ‘Mario Kart’ themed kart while wearing a Super Mario costume in a city with very heavy traffic. This was before Nintendo’s lawyers came knocking on these companies’ doors. The noise was enormous, WWE even put their stars on these cards and dressed them as characters from the Big N:

Nintendo glitches. One of the most famous examples was the company MariCar – Mario + Car, very clever – which has been around for almost a decade and offers exactly what we describe: a kart tour with a ‘Mario Kart’ theme, but without a kart tour. License from Nintendo. Nintendo is a company known for many things, including suing people it believes are threatening its intellectual property, and in 2017 they went after MariCar.

There were other companies, like MariCar, but that was obvious because…well, users could dress up as Nintendo characters (the company itself had a costume rental business). In addition to violating its intellectual property rights, Nintendo was concerned that accidents could tarnish the company’s name, and after an initial fine of 10 million yen (about 61,500 euros), MariCar appealed and the amount was increased to 50 million yen (about 307,000 euros). Euro). They also had to change their name to Street Kart and now their costumes are superheroes.

and accidents. After tourism stopped in Japan due to Covid-19, excitement for these tours decreased, but with the reopening of the borders, companies offering these activities have returned strongly. And beyond the fact that they violated Nintendo’s ideas to begin with, what’s happening now is that they’re a danger.

They are not a joke car: they have a displacement of 49.3 cc and a length of two meters. They reach 60 kilometers per hour, and two related accidents occurred in the same year that Nintendo first filed the lawsuit: hitting a cyclist and damaging a building. There were 50 accidents in total in 2018, and there are a few more this year.

Irregularities. Crashing vehicles, hitting pedestrians and other accidents are what spurred police investigations, and it turns out all is not well. To drive one of these karts on the streets of Japan (or, for example, drive a rental car), a tourist must have both his own driver’s license and an international driver’s license.

This is a permit that must be obtained in the country of origin, and it turns out that the police found that the cards were being rented to tourists without this permit. The unnamed company claimed it requested permits but failed to check whether they were valid, and now the operator faces charges of renting a car to an unlicensed driver.

the japanese are fed up. This business has been causing headaches for Nintendo and local police in the cities where the activity takes place for years, and the local people do not like it either. Over the years, there have been complaints about the image or noise they create, as well as comments about safety concerns and the idea of ​​turning the streets of a busy city into an amusement park.

But proof that the Japanese hate services like those offered by MariCar is the crowd-funding round the company launched after the Nintendo crowd and COVID-19. With the “Save Street Card” hook, MariCar Street Kart aimed to raise two million yen (about 12,300 euros) but only collected 11,500 (about 70 euros). There’s not even a price for one of the kart trips, which shows that the Japanese don’t really care about the company’s future.

For now, Street Card continues to work, but we’ll see for how long.

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