That Time Super Mario Destroyed Thousands Of Bootleg Games

We've documented Nintendo's recent history of battling hackers, pirates, pirates named Bowser, and even fans who just want to pay tribute to the company by making some neat Nintendo-inspired games. The company is hellbent on preserving sole ownership of its IPs – even to the point of endangering the preservation of said IPs, so one has got to wonder: just how much more hardcore was this company when we didn't have social media and cameras pointed at them the entire time? Like in the very distant time of, say, ‘94? Well, back when most people in the Netherlands were probably getting hyped about the PS1, Nintendo’s own Netherlands branch was busy setting an example by conducting a mass steamrolling of bootleg Nintendo games. Yeah, turns out bootlegging was a serious problem in the Netherlands back in the day, one Nintendo spared no expenses to end right there and then.

Our more attentive readers might have noticed that Mario himself flew in from the Mushroom Kingdom to supervise the entire process in the images above, a pretty NARC-y use of his spare time from plumbing, but it gets even worse. It turns out that he was the very person mercilessly rolling over said vile pirated cartridges.

We get that Nintendo probably thought that looking tough on crime was peak '90s cool, but the fact that most pictures are in black and white (1995 was a long time ago, but we've just checked and it turns out color photography was already a thing back then), and the costume they picked for Mario really isn't helping their vibe here. Like, how deranged is this thing? Even in pictures taken by Nintendo for Nintendo magazines, this looks like an imposter trying to make Mario look bad.

Boy, this is creepier than princess Daisy's real appearance in Super Smash Brothers.

Top Image: Nintendo