It’s hard to picture Nintendo anywhere other than the top of the world, but back in 2014, things were looking pretty grim for the house that Mario built. In May, just 18 months after the launch of the Wii U, the company was spiraling out of control, and looking for ways to quickly bring in some revenue that they weren’t getting from console or game sales. During a rather dire earnings call in 2013, Nintendo told investors that it was looking for new licensing opportunities with its characters. That effort finally came to fruition in August 2014 with the release of the Mercedes DLC pack for Mario Kart 8, which saw a set of three real-life Mercedes vehicles added to the perennial racing game.
At the time, Nintendo fans were not enthusiastic about the DLC. Product placement wasn’t anything new in games and it’s still somewhat common today (Monster Energy in Death Stranding, Cup Noodle in Final Fantasy 15, the entire Metaverse) but this was an especially icky partnership. The Mushroom Kingdom had never been tainted by this kind of reality-breaking branding before. People of all ages have an innocent, childlike relationship with Mario, and the Mercedes deal broke the illusion of purity that Nintendo had once had. The whole thing stank of a desperate money-making decision, because it was.
Setting aside the uncomfortable blending between Mario’s cartoon world and real life cars, luxury commuter vehicles might be the worst fit for Mario Kart possible. It would be one thing to see Donkey Kong cruising around in a windowless Jeep Wrangler with his head popping out of the roll cage, or Yoshi whipping around Rainbow Road in a McLaren, but this is just a Mercedes GLA. It’s a subcompact SUV for upper-middle class families, not a battle wagon for dodging green shells. At least the other two were racing cars – not that I’m going to defend putting a 1957 roadster and a Grand Prix racer loved by Adolf Hitler in goddamn Mario Kart.
Nintendo must have known its fan wouldn’t be super psyched about this, but desperate times call for desperate measures. This is the one time you can’t blame the CEO for enriching himself while the company ruins its legacy with dubious business deals either, because it’s well known that Satoru Iwata cut his pay in half at the beginning of 2014 to help Nintendo out. At the end of the day, it’s just one little DLC pack, one tiny brand deal, in one entry in one kart racing series on one console. What’s the big deal? Is what I would say, if Mario Kart 8 wasn’t one of the most successful and enduring video games of all time.
I think there’s an important lesson to be learned here about integrity. No one could have known at the time that Mario Kart 8 would one day be resurrected on the Switch, which, at 122 million units, is now the third best selling console of all time. And no one could have known that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe would go on to sell more than 50 million copies on the Switch, becoming the best-selling game of all time on the console, and consistently outselling other, newer Switch games year after year. It’s now 2023, and not even Tears of the Kingdom has a chance of surpassing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at this point. All these years later the game continues to grow with new tracks and higher sales, and there’s Mercedes, front and center before every single race. I don’t know what Mercedes paid Nintendo for the exposure, but I guarantee it wasn’t enough.
No one really cares about the Mercedes thing anymore. It’s been ten years and Mario Kart 8 is still the best kart racer of all time; players have long made peace with the uncomfortable product placement deal made once upon a time when the Nintendo was in dire straits. Now, everytime I scroll through the options in the kart menu and catch a glimpse of Bowser crammed into the Hitlermobile, I get two competing feelings. First I feel a twinge of sadness that Nintendo ever made such an ill-advised deal, and that I still have to be reminded of it a decade later. But second, I feel a modicum of respect towards Nintendo for turning things around so dramatically. The Mercedes DLC is cringe, but there’s no denying Nintendo has come a long, long way since then.