Do you remember MariCar? It is a company that offers karting tours around Tokyo, where participants dress up as characters from the Super Mario Serie. As you can imagine, this annoying Nintendo, which brought MariCar to court in a copyright infringement case against the karting company in 2017. It was unsuccessful, but then sued the karting company for intellectual property infringement in the same year and won, something that MariCar initially seemed to ignore.
However, MariCar was ordered to pay Nintendo 50 million yen (£ 375,000) for violating such intellectual property and changed its name to Street Kart Tokyo Bay. Additionally, the company’s official site now includes the following disclaimer stating that “it is not a reflection of Nintendo at all” or Mario Kart. Super Mario character costumes are no longer supplied, and the company now describes itself by offering “Real Life SuperHero Go-Karting.”
It seems that Street Kart Tokyo Bay’s legal battle with Nintendo is the least of his problems. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has caused a recession in tourism, something Street Kart Tokyo Bay relies heavily on for survival.
To counter this, the company launched a “Save The Street Kart” crowdfunding campaign in Japan. The page was posted on April 24 on Campfire, Japan’s response to Kickstarter, but when it closed on June 30, it had failed to reach its funding target. Only four people donated a total of 11,569 yen (£ 86), well below the target of 2,000,000 yen (£ 15,000).
What this means for the future of Street Kart Tokyo Bay remains to be seen, but it seems that the days of X-Men screaming with joy at seeing Mario and his friends on the roads of Tokyo have finally come to an end.
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