Mario

Japan’s Official Mario and Luigi Cosplay Costumes

Here we go! These are the first officially licensed Mario and Luigi costumes for Japan. I believe that officially licensed Halloween costumes are available outside the country, but until now, that wasn’t the case in Japan. Below, you can check out the Luigi costume (via Inside): Both outfits go on sale in Japan on September…

Few video games look as insanely joyful as Super Mario Maker, the upcoming level-maker that’s out September 11 for Wii U. Check out this new overview video for a look at customizable sound effects, Amiibo support, and other features in Nintendo’s latest.

$1,000 Bounty Offered For Mario 64 Glitch

Mario fan and glitch hunter extraordinaire Pannenkoek2012 has a contract for you, Witcher: if you can recreate and record a weird hiccup he recently saw on Twitch, he’ll give you $1000. Streamer DOTA_TeaBag caught the glitch, seemingly by accident, in a video taken during a run of Super Mario 64’s Tick Tock Clock stage. As…

Smash Bros. In First Person Would Look Weird

YouTubers SoKrispyMedia show us why Smash Bros. with a VR headset in first person view would be problematic and hard to play. We don’t have to worry about Nintendo making a game like this in the near future, but that doesn’t make this real-life VR concept less funny. It’s an awesomely edited video with Link,…

A Game About Killing ‘Mario’

Mario is the ultimate video game hero, beloved by families the world over. Let’s kill him. Kill The Plumber is as close as the game’s developer could get to Fucking Murder The Shit Out Of Mario without risking a lawsuit. I mean, that character looks audaciously similar to Mario. And the art style! I’m kinda…

Mario, Luigi & Wario Cosplayers Crash The Tour De France

If you need the music for this kind of atheticism, here it is (via Reddit) UPDATE: Here’s a still:

Every Physics Demo Should Star Mario

If you’re going to put together a tech demo for Nvidia’s Flex physics simulation in Unreal Engine 4 you might as well make it fun, and what’s more fun than Mario? YouTuber CryZENx (via Taltigolt) has injected Nintendo’s number one plumber into a quick and dirty physics demo that sees Mario wading through and pelted…

Mario In Unreal Engine 4 Just Ain’t Right

Would you look at that. Turns out the uncanny valley works both ways. YouTube’s Aryoksini , the guy behind the Blender version of Super Mario 64 from last year, demonstrates why we like our Mario games in colorful cartoon kingdoms and not realistic office buildings, kitchenettes and museums. Aryoksini rebuilt the Mario animations from scratch…

Computer Is Learning To Make Mario Levels By Watching YouTube

First they’ll take our jobs. Then they’ll take our Mario. While Nintendo works hard to let us build our own Mario levels, the Georgia Institute of Technology are developing an “artificially intelligent system” that can build its own stages The terror comes not in the fact it can build levels—procedural generation is everywhere these days—but…

Guy Beats Super Mario World In 23 Minutes…While Blindfolded

Fun fact: you don’t actually need to see Mario levels in order to beat them. Marvel as speedrunner PangaeaPanga clears Super Mario World without actually looking at the game using a combination of good timing, and precise jumps. The entire thing takes a whopping 23:14, which is impressive considering the circumstances at play here: Kind…

Visiting Tokyo’s Super Mario Cafes

There are Super Mario Cafes in Tokyo? Oh yes, but only for a limited time. In honor of Super Mario’s 30th anniversary, Nintendo is teaming up with Tower Record Cafes in Tokyo for a trio of newly-opened Mario-themed cafes. Tokyo resident, Nintendo super fan, and all around good guy Kyle McLainswung by all three (in…

Super Mario Maker’s Online Features Sound Really Cool

Nintendo isn’t exactly known for its on-point social features. But based on what they’ve shared on Mario Maker thus far, it really seems like they’re going to nail it this time. Yesterday, Nintendo held a Treehouse stream event where they described some of the features we can expect in their upcoming game where you can…

Nintendo’s next Super Mario sports game will be Mario Tennis Ultra Smash, a holiday 2015 Wii U game that seems to use the ability to turn into a giant-size character as its main gameplay gimmick.

Super Mario Maker Looks Nuts

Here’s Mario’s iconic 1-1 level, remade into a giant death trap by the folks at Nintendo. Wow! The GIF above is a small slice of a Mario level debuted at the Nintendo World Championships today, and it gives us a small taste of just how bonkers Mario Maker levels will be. Players will be able…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Wild Junk: The Winners!

Last week we asked our readers to fix The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s missing penis problem. Our readers responded with the stuff of endless nightmares. The only rule was no actual genitalia, which only encouraged them. When you scroll through this week’s runners-up, you will see things you can never erase from your brain. You…

19 Years Later, Super Mario 64 Player Finds New Way To Use Goombas 

When most of us see a goomba, our instinct is to try to squash it, get rid of it. Turns out, though, that goombas can be way more useful than that. Last year, I profiled Scott Buchanan, an intense Super Mario 64 player who manages to beat levels without ever jumping at all. This month,…

The Times Mario Wasn’t a Nintendo Exclusive

When you think of Mario, you think of Nintendo. The two are linked so firmly in your mind it’s almost impossible to think that the beloved character’s games ever showed up on other systems. But it has happened—and more than once. Donkey Kong (1981-1988) The first Mario game (though he was only known as “Jumpman”…

The Worst Japanese Sales Week In a Long Time

Oh boy. The most recent video game sales numbers in Japan are not good. In fact, they’re bad. Very bad. As blog Hokanko points out, the most recent Media Create sales figures—which date from May 11 to May 17—are the worst since 2001. This period was the week that followed Golden Week, a string of…

A Look at Adding Mario to Non-Mario Games

This week sees the US release of Puzzle & Dragons Z + Super Mario Bros. Edition, which (as the name implies) includes a version of the addictive mobile game completely redone with Mario characters, enemies, and levels. But this is far from the first time Mario has taken over a pre-existing game. There are numerous…

What Mario’s Nightmares Sound Like

Nothing gets a Staturday night party going like every sound effect in the original Super Mario Bros. all at once. Looped. For 12 hours. I’ve been listening to YouTuber crysknife007’s “composition” for about 20 minutes now, and I can feel my brain scrambling about in my head trying to catch every last drop of it.…