If you have been playing Mario Kart 8 for the past few months, you have surely downloaded or at least heard about the free Mercedes Benz content. If not, here’s the deal—Nintendo teamed up with Mercedes to give the German automaker some serious product placement, which some people weren’t happy about. Personally, I don’t really care, because it’s not like driving around in a Benz in a video game is going to influence me to buy one of their actual cars—or give me the money to even do so. But I digress.
The Mercedes-Nintendo relationship didn’t end there. The car company has been releasing commercial spots featuring real-life version of Mario, Luigi, and Princess Peach that are… just… why? Who does this appeal to? Why is Luigi breakdancing? Is the point of Mario Kart to make the actual person slip on a banana peel and not their car? Would it have been too much to ask for some CGI? WHY DO THESE EXIST?!
In short, yeah, we have questions, but I have to say that these are definitely worth checking out, if only for entertainment’s sake.
You can watch one of the clips above. I can’t recommend the game enough. [via]