Nintendo Theme Park May Expand Beyond Mario

The Super Nintendo World theme park will seemingly eventually expand to include franchises other than Super Mario.

At this time, the plan is for Super Nintendo World to open in Osaka, Japan sometime in July. Attractions revealed thus far include Bowser’s Castle, a Mario Kart course, and a lot of other things that all have to do with Mario and his friends. While there have been rumblings that Nintendo is interested in featuring more than just Super Mario at the park, there hasn’t been much official information regarding their expansion intentions at this time. 

However, Ayumu Yamamoto (the Universal Japan Studio’s head of marketing) recently told IGN Japan that all associated parties are indeed looking at ways to eventually add more Nintendo characters and properties to the park. 

“We’re starting with a Mario centered area,” says Yamamoto. “However, we are thinking about expanding to Nintendo’s other IPs after opening.”

That may sound like an obvious expansion for the park, but it does raise some interesting questions. If we had to guess, we’d say that either Zelda or Pokemon would be the next biggest Nintendo franchise that they could add to the park. The latter franchise would be especially interesting considering the ways that you could utilize Pokemon Go within the park. Of course, we’d love to have a chance to retrieve the Master Sword at a Zelda wing of the park. 

In any case, it really feels like a matter of when, not if, Nintendo will eventually add some of their other franchises to the park. Logistically, you could argue that it would be more economical to add smaller areas and features dedicated to various Nintendo games, but considering the depth of the Nintendo library (and the depth of Nintendo’s pockets) we really wouldn’t rule anything out as it concerns the park’s expansion. 

Matthew Byrd is a staff writer for Den of Geek. He spends most of his days trying to pitch deep-dive analytical pieces about Killer Klowns From Outer Space to an increasingly perturbed series of editors. You can read more of his work here or find him on Twitter at @SilverTuna014.