Super Mario Bros. characters will soon be featured in a mash-up pack that will launch on May 17, Tuesday for the Wii U console. This is the first time that the Nintendo characters have showed up on a rival company's console. The 40 Mario skins will be included on the retail disc this month while the downloadable content (DLC) version was launched last December.
Besides the skins the Super Mario Mash-Up Pack will also include a new world as well as item textures inspired by the Nintendo series. It will also contain 15 pieces of music from Super Mario 64, according to Ars Technica.
In 2014 when Microsoft purchased Minecraft from Mojang it promised that other versions of the video game would not be affected. That included PlayStation, Android, and iOS.
The OS giant has kept its word. It released a Wii U version a couple months ago and featured DLC from Sony's LittleBigPlanet series in the PlayStation 4 version.
This is not the first time Nintendo has allowed other developers to use its Mario characters. Companies including Bandai Namco and Capcom have been allowed to create several Mario spin-offs. However, they were all for Nintendo systems.
This time Microsoft will earn money as the game's publisher. Even though Wii U is far behind the sales figures of Sony's PS4 and Microsoft's Xbox One consoles it is somewhat odd to see Mario on other platforms. Nintendo characters will also show up on smartphones later this year.
Minecraft has recently become a type of content platform. It includes an ecosystem of mods and videos that is larger than a gaming company's family of consoles.
In related news, an unofficial emulator brings some titles of Nintendo's Virtual Boy 3D console to Google Cardboard. A Reddit user reports that owners of a Cardboard VR headset also need an Android smartphone and RetroArch emulator, according to The Verge.
The Virtual Boy became notorious for causing motion sickness due to its red screens. However, Reddit user The-King-of-Spain reported that he did not experience any headaches playing the game in greyscale.
The original Virtual Boy received mostly bad reviews. However, Nintendo reported earlier this year that it was researching VR technology again.