Artist claims Super Nintendo World official website uses his fan art

A new website for Nintendo next Super Nintendo World Japanese theme park went to live yesterday. It featured new details and a virtual tour of the video game wonderland ahead of its opening on February 4. He also used an image of Mario for his loading screen which appears to have been created not by Nintendo, but by one of his fans.

“Love the way Nintendo used the MY old ass Mario render on their official Nintendo World website,” ujiidow, Twitter user and Mario fan tweeted earlier today. Their image of Mario was created about three years ago using open source animation software Blender, and has been shared on Reddit. at the time. The Mario model used for the rendering was not Nintendo’s, but belonged to 3D artist RafaKnight, who shared it for download on their Patreon in 2017.

Neither Nintendo nor Universal Studios Japan immediately responded 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 video game industry’s most protective and contentious intellectual property holders. (This week again, the GameJolt game distribution website was a DMCA notice from Nintendo targeting hundreds of free fan-made projects based on the company’s intellectual property.)

The potential irony has not been lost on the r / gaming subreddit, who shared ujiidow’s discovery in a brazenly roasting Nintendo thread, which has been voted over 60,000 times. A post on the subject safer NintendoLife shows the rendering of ujiidow side by side with a standard Mario rendering that it is similar to. While the two look almost identical at first, it’s clear on closer inspection that the ujiidow’s is much more detailed, especially around the shading.

However, Ujiidow doesn’t necessarily complain. “I’m so used to my renderings of Mario getting very little attention,” they said. Kotaku in an email. “I’m told to take action on this, but I find it really nice to finally have some recognition about it.”

You can find some of their fan art on their DeviantArt page. A die more recent parts is a version of Cyberpunk 2077The art of the box which replaces its main character V with a more grizzled and more armed Mario. Another modern Mario watch and one of Mario 64 exchange glances while swimming in a water pool.

Ujiidow said they have contacted Universal Studios about the image but have yet to receive a response. In the meantime, they took the whole situation as a compliment. “The fact that my rendering is mistaken for an official rendering shows that I’m doing something here.”