A new meme has started gaining some traction on Twitter, reminding fans old and new that Mario Party was in fact the original Squid Game. Nintendo has long been releasing its Mario Party series of games on consoles. Each rendition of the game comes with its own set of mini game challenges that are riddled in suspense, much like the tasks presented to Squid Game’s contestants.
Squid Game has become one of Netflix’s most talked about shows since its debut. The South Korean survival drama sees contestants who are down on their luck compete for ₩45.6 billion (which equates to roughly $38 million US) in prize money by taking part in a series of children’s games. The twist, however, is that if any contestant fails during these games, they are brutally killed by the Squid Game adjudicators.
While Nintendo is not a company that one would normally relate with such violent horror or gore, with its games usually taking on a much more family friendly vibe, there is no denying the uncanny similarities between the Mario Party series and Squid Game. This was not missed by Twitter user OnTheDownLoTho, who shared a clip of a Mario Party game that sees the loser (in this case Luigi) being cut off from the boat he's hanging on in a game of Shy Guy Says. Luigi is then left to drift helplessly out to sea - and his demise. Meanwhile, the other characters are left to play on, in a bid to avoid the same fate as Luigi. It is a harsh and unfair punishment for what appears to be a simple slip up, and OnTheDownLoTho added suspenseful music and screams to solidify the clip's connection to the violent show.
Mario Party is not the only one of Nintendo’s video games to have been given the Squid Game treatment recently. Animal Crossing New Horizons features fan-made Squid Game recreations as well. Given New Horizons’ gentle and wholesome gameplay, it is quite something to see the horrors of Squid Game replicated in such a tranquil game. And yet, there is something about this marriage of cute and gory that actually seems to work incredibly well, and as such has seen many island residents pay homage to Netflix’s Squid Game.
The next installment in the Mario Party series will be Superstars. This game will encapsulate 100 of the series’ most famous minigames, all in one place. As with all Mario Party releases before, friendships will likely be made and hilariously ruined upon Mario Party Superstars’ eventual launch this October. Hopefully, the losers of these minigames will not meet ends as gruesome as the ones suffered in Squid Game.
Source: OnTheDownLoTho/Twitter