It appears someone working on the cacti props at the Super Nintendo World theme park in Universal Studios Japan might have inadvertently built them to look just like some cacti that appear in a New Super Mario Bros Wii fan mod. Whoops!
As spotted by Twitter user Meatball132, the cacti in question can be clearly spotted in a video recorded and uploaded by the YouTube channel Universal Parks News Today.
The cacti can be seen in the Yoshi’s Adventure ride. These props don’t just sort of look like the same cactus models seen in the fan mod, Newer Super Mario Bros Wii, but instead are near-identical replicas. You can even spot a cactus prop at Super Nintendo World that has a pink flower placed in the same spot as the mod’s cactus.
As pointed out by Meatball132, it appears that whoever was working on this prop might have just searched Google for “New Super Mario Bros Wii cactus” and didn’t realize that the cactus that appeared as one of the top results was not from an official game, but from a fan mod released back in 2013.
I can’t wait for Nintendo to send Nintendo and Universal a cease and desist.
What’s more, this isn’t the first example of folks spotting fan-made content being used by Super Nintendo World. Last month an artist suggested that Nintendo and Universal had used the artist’s 3D render of Mario on the park’s official website. What kind of rinky-dink ship are they running over there?
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