It’s all going to be okay: Universal Studios’ Super Nintendo World opens next year
Feel free to start planning your move to the Mushroom Kingdom
The real world, the one we currently live in, is bad and sad. You can’t ride dinosaurs, monkeys don’t wear ties, there are no mushroom people, and you have to work to get money rather than jumping up at yellow boxes and hoping some coins will come out. It sucks, and we’re sick of dealing with it.
Luckily, we only have to deal with it for a bit longer, because Universal Studios Hollywood has announced the window for when it’s planning to open its Super Nintendo World area. From there it’s just a matter of time before Universal starts building horrific planned communities like Disney, and we can all abandon our lives and live in the Mushroom Kingdom. Wahoo!
The bad news is that the aforementioned window is big and at least nine months away. As reported by Deadline, Universal Studios says it’s going to open Super Nintendo World in 2023… and that’s as specific as we’re going to get. Construction has already begun “in the lower section of the park, near the Transformers ride” (which is inspiring a whole new level of fantasy that we’re unable to properly deal with at the moment), so that at least means that we’ll probably get some in-progress photos at some point soon.
Of course, there is also Japan’s Super Nintendo World, which opened at Universal Studios Japan about a year ago, so we can safely guess that the American version will at least be somewhat similar (though you can expect Kirby to have angry eyebrows, and Doki Doki Panic will be re-skinned with Super Mario characters). The Japanese version has some Mario rides and Mario food, but one of the big gimmicks is a Power-Up Band system where you get a wristband that lets you have special interactions with the Nintendo scenery.
Oh, and we say “Nintendo,” but the Japanese version is at least almost entirely Super Mario stuff. Would it kill them to throw in some Legend Of Zelda? We know it’s too much to ask for an F-Zero ride, but let us at least put on a tunic and whack some moblins with a sword.