A Nintendo Mario Kart rip-off, known to Tokyo citizens and foreigners as MariCar, has officially faced legal action due to Nintendo winning against them in a lawsuit.
As people may already know, Tokyo (and Japan in general) offers a lot of things for foreigners and citizens to do. Whether you want to spend that time in a maid cafe, an arcade or an onsen, it doesn’t matter because Japan has something for everyone. Only, if you’re looking for a wild rental car adventure dressed as your favourite Mario Kart character, you may have to look somewhere else.
This news comes from Nintendo Japan, who explains that MariCar is a kart rental place that let’s you fulfil your real life Mario Kart dreams. Only it isn’t particularly safe as they are allowed to go on Japan’s roads, which doesn’t sound particularly nefarious but coupled with the fact that they are small and people are more likely to be distracted by them due to cosplay? It seems like a recipe for disaster.
It also doesn’t bode well that MariCar is making money through the use of Nintendo’s IP. While you can argue that they technically aren’t calling their service Mario Kart, the fact still remains that you’re able to dress up as Mario Kart characters. Thus, it makes sense on why Nintendo would want to distance themselves from the rental service.
But it isn’t all bad news. MariCar will not be shutting down, in fact the only thing that will be changing is that they will be unable to rent out specific Mario Kart costumes to customers. Oh, and they’ll need to pay Nintendo an undisclosed amount of money as compensation. Frankly? It could have been a lot worse for them.
Nintendo concluded that “in order to protect our valued intellectual property that we have built up over many years of effort, we will continue to take necessary measures against infringement of intellectual property including our brand.”