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The cactus model at Super Nintendo World may have been accidentally designed from a fan mod

There’s not a month that goes by where we hear about Nintendo issuing a cease and desist notice, or the company finds itself in another legal battle, and now thanks to Twitter user Meatball132, an interesting observation has been made that will potentially go down like a lead balloon at Nintendo HQ. It’s surrounding Super Nintendo World and the design of the recognisable Mario Cactus (or rather, Cacti) in the new park. It seems the designers at Universal Studios Japan have accidentally referenced the wrong design and have settled with one from a fan made Wii mod called ‘Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii’.

It’ll be interesting to see if the design team work quickly to redesign the Cacti in Super Mario World, but we can’t imagine Nintendo will be pleased to see a mod’s design in their official park. How ironic.

Via

22 thoughts on “The cactus model at Super Nintendo World may have been accidentally designed from a fan mod”

      1. And how do we know that because there both similar looking, no offense but I seen alot of catcus designs that look like this, it still seems like a bit of stretch.

      2. When Smash Ultimate was released, Masked Man’s Spirit was actually a fanmade sprite, similar to the original but not quite the same. I believe the original sprite was patched in after this was noticed.

      1. “These fictional cacti branches bend at an angle similar to these other fictional cacti branches”? I don’t think it matters… or that anyone owns the copyright on “cacti”, much less how their arms bend.

        I’m sorry but… yeah.

  1. It’s a generic, honestly pretty uncreative, cactus design; the designers could have unintentionally referenced the mod but a lot of artists unknowingly create similar things — especially if the design document had specified for branched cacti with flowers — so I’d wager it is coincidental.

  2. Legally, Nintendo owns also the fan mods if they so desire, they can claim it since it is a modification of their intellectual property using their assets. I´m not saying it is correct or not just saying that it makes no difference legally.

    1. Thats not true, that’s not how things work, that’s not how you acquire intellectual property. If I put Master Chief in a Mario mod, Microsoft still owns that. Nintendo doesn’t just get it, Nintendo has no legal right to it. Nintendo has no legal right to the artwork they used as reference. Making up your own facts based on your flawed opinions, doesn’t have any effect on the real world. Would the mods creator, or the person who designed the artwork ever going to pursue the case? Absolutely not, they’d have to be crazy. Rare worked on Donkey Kong Country, Rare has no legal right to that intellectual property. Rare(microsoft now that microsoft owns rare) owns Banjo Kazooie, which first released on Nintendos platform. Nintendo has no rights to Banjo Kazooie.

  3. Can’t people just let it be. At least it exists in the physical world now. That fan should be proud.

    It’s in a theme park! A Nintendo (Mario) theme park!

  4. Whatever company made those models probably just searched for references they could find on the internet. It’s not like anyone knew this was a fan mod until someone pointed it out.

  5. It’s clear that the designers from Universal Studios Japan just grabbed whatever looked “official” to them from Google images and did not bother to check the image’s credentials and credibility. Nintendo may have dropped the ball on that one…

  6. This is the type of fan mod Nintendo ignores, so it is completely possible one of the park designers found it on the internet not knowing it was a mod and Miyamoto didn’t question it thinking they did a good job matching the modern mario atheistic with it. It also could be coincidentally because of the fact they both where going for a similar art style and the modders understood how to make something look authentic.

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