A pipe welcoming you, a flower ready to gobble you raw, and Peach in her princess outfit greeting you as the famous Goombas roam overhead. Welcome to Super Nintendo World, located in the heart of Universal Studios Park in Los Angeles, California.
Opened in mid-February, almost two years after the first one in Osaka (Japan), the space has something to delight fans of the most famous plumber with a mustache. You enter through an iconic green pipe (but tunnel-style this time) before meeting Super Mario and his friends.
Fans of the franchise will find there the different known worlds of the saga (the pyramids, Princess Peach’s castle, the bottom of the sea, the Mushroom kingdom, Bowser’s castle, the clouds), its inhabitants not necessarily friendly, but also the most characteristic elements. (flowers, pieces of coins, stars, streetlights from Super Mario Galaxy…). Everything is faithfully reproduced.
A huge crowd, an endless wait.
For his next 40 years, Mario is thus giving himself a bath of youth that attracts crowds from the early hours of the day and the opening of the park. It’s barely 8:30am when we enter the area, and while the rest of Universal Studios seems to be slowly waking up, the excitement and long lines are already here. And one of them actually leads to attraction. Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challengethe only real place that already shows a 2h40 wait.
As in the Super Mario game, this one also has a trick and a secret passage to access the room faster: the queue. single rider. You will board with strangers, but much faster (25 minutes for us).
But everything possible has been done to make the course a success. Nintendo and the Universal Studios teams took special care of the attraction as soon as it entered Bowser’s castle that houses it. The walls are immersed in the atmosphere. Mario Kart with effigies of the drivers, nods to the racing game mario kart 8 deluxeabsolute success of Nintendo with more than 52 million units sold.
Everything is in the detail of the sumptuous decorations. And that’s the whole paradox, because the attraction is played in augmented reality. Mario Kart helmet on the head on which we only fix a visor on which images of the reality of the race will be projected, we do not make the most of the decorations of the attraction that immerses in the atmosphere of the race.
You will have to turn the wheel (for fun) and above all aim at the opponents by throwing projectiles at them, shooting them with fireballs or collecting lots of mysterious objects and coins to finish first. The rendering is very good in our eyes.
The attraction lasts quite well (about 4 minutes) and we follow the chases in environments well known to Switch players (rainbow race, Mario Circuit, clouds, etc.), facing the usual augmented reality pilots (Mario, Luigi , Peach , Koopa, Maskass, etc.) that you have to aim to get out of the way. A great success in immersion.
A nostalgic and fanservice effect that comes at a cost
Perhaps it is also a pity that with such a wealth of universes, the area only offers a true attraction of this type. For the rest, and to be able to make the most of it, you have to invest in an interactive bracelet equipped with an NFC chip (40 dollars! About 36 euros). This will allow you to simulate picking up the brick pieces by touching it, for additional game options in Mario Kartto collect stamps to unlock in-app content and accumulate points.
Super Nintendo World can be explored in an hour or two by taking your time and enjoying the locations. The sets are sumptuous, seeing Peach “in person” is quite nice, taking a break at the Toadstool Cafe or indulging in Mario or Luigi branded confectionery is a real treat.
But quite an expensive pleasure: to fully enjoy the place, it is better to add early access to avoid the crowds (20 to 30 dollars – 18 to 27 euros – to arrive 1 hour before the opening) in addition to the entrance to the Universal Studios park (from $109 before tax, around 100 euros + tax, on the best days). And above all, invest in the NFC bracelet without which the space remains a pleasant and not very interactive decoration around a truly splendid attraction.
This is perhaps the negative point: Super Nintendo World is a great idea on paper, with crazy potential, but a bit minimal result. The Harry Potter area with its gigantic model of Hogwarts castle that houses an attraction and its recreation of Hogsmeade is more fascinating.
Source: BFM TV
