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The background cacti seen here were created specifically for the fangame New Super Mario Bros. Wii, released in 2013.
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The background cactus seen at Universal Japan’s Super Nintendo World bears a striking resemblance to this fangame sprite.
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A side-by-side comparison highlights the similarities. Other cacti seen in the game have the flower placed in other positions.
Universal Park News Today / New team
A piece of scenery from the recently opened Super Nintendo World theme park in Japan appears to be directly inspired by an original work of art created for a fangame.
Twitter user meatball123 was among the first to notice the strange similarity after seeing a cactus decoration in the background of a video for the park’s Yoshi’s Adventure walk. The specific three-pronged design of the cactus in this video is unlike anything seen in an official Mario game, but it almost exactly matches the background cacti found in World 2 of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, a fan-made mod released in 2013.
Meatball123 also notes that, as of last weekend, the three-branched cactus sprite was prominently displayed when searching for “New Super Mario Bros. Wii cactus “was produced on Google Images, which might explain how the confusion happened. Representatives for Nintendo and Universal Japan have yet to respond to a request for comment from Ars Technica.
A video through Super Nintendo World’s Yoshi’s Adventure (jump at 4:40 to see the revealing cactus).
New Super Mario Bros. Wii is the result of a years-long effort by the fan-developers of Newer Team, who also created a similar mod for the DS version of New Super Mario Bros.. It features new levels, enemies, art, and an original soundtrack that builds on the original Wii 2009. The mod officially requires a retail copy of the original. New Super Mario Bros. Wii to play on a jailbroken Wii or Wii U console, but there are also pre-built floating ISOs to enable emulator-based play on a PC.
Super Nintendo World’s apparent use of an element of original fangame takes on some additional irony given Nintendo’s strict stance on fangames in general. In recent years, the company has posted numerous DMCA takedown notices for fangames – and even some of the tools used to create them. The discovery of the cactus also comes a month after the discovery of a fan his personal 3D render of Mario used on the Super Nintendo World website.
In a bit of a similar story, there is some evidence to suggest that the version of Super Mario Bros. available on Wii Virtual Console originally came from a hacked ROM dump found on the Internet.
A playthrough of world 2 of the New Super Mario Bros. Wii fangame (jump at 7:00 p.m. to see the cactus sprites in question).
In the end, it’s probably nothing more than a carefree snafu caused by a less scrupulous theme park designer. But it does highlight how the fangame community and the more “official” efforts of IP holders continually feed off of each other, as can be seen more directly (and intentionally) in the Sonic fangame community.
Ad image by Universal Park News Today / YouTube
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