Nintendo Files Takedown Against Unofficial Mario NFT Gambling Game

Nintendo has taken action against another unofficial game involving Super Mario, this time one that is a little more dubious than the others.

The target this time was a concept going by 1-UP Platform, which described itself as a “retro-gaming platform for everyone that uses NFTs as powerups” and a “a 2D, Battle-Royale concept based on classic retro games that we all know and love”. The idea was that players would place bets on matches for a chance to earn Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), a blockchain based method of digital file ownership that is currently a controversial topic online.

Following a closed-beta test, 1-UP Platform posted some short gameplay footage on Twitter, where fans quickly noticed that it was full of assets taken from Nintendo games or Nintendo fangames. The Tweet in question is still available, and can be found below:

The footage seemingly caught the eye of Nintendo, which appears to have begun the process of taking the project down. As pointed out by Twitter user @jycompany_, videos relating to the project have been taken down on Youtube, seemingly at Nintendo’s request:

In a statement issued to Kotaku, the team behind 1-Up Platform had this to say about their project and the action Nintendo has been taking against them:

“I’m a community manager for an anonymous team working on a cool indie concept. The goal was to innovate on top of an amazing idea infernoplus had launched in 2019. Nintendo had shut them down for innovating and are known to do that. We just created a beefed up version of it with a combat system. Goal was to innovate privately within the community to showcase what’s possible if we all contribute new ideas. We just feel like corporate ideas are drying out and nearly dead.”

“For all the Nintendo simps having a panic attack, fear not. It was private test videos getting put out there to grow grow size of the community. When we go live the entire game will have custom art with none of the original Nintendo fanmade sprites. This was just a proof of concept. The engine is custom made and will be used for other original games. The buzz is great though. At least it gets people talking about new ideas.”

Although 1-Up Platform claims that the assets were always planned to be swapped out, a past blog post where they claimed they would “bring Mario and friends to the blockchain” seems to suggest otherwise. Whatever the case, with Nintendo now getting involved, it is unlikely that they will be able to get away with using any of Nintendo’s IPs as part of their project, fanmade or otherwise.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.