A Nintendo fan has modded an entire racetrack from Mario Kart Wii into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The two properties have crossed over officially before in Mario Kart 8, where a post-launch DLC pack made Link playable and added a Hyrule course to the game.
Breath of the Wild took the world by storm when it released in 2017. The newest addition to Nintendo's beloved series of adventure games deviated sharply from the status quo by introducing a vast open world and giving players the freedom to explore it however they wanted. Instead of traditional dungeons, the game offered Shrines and Divine Beasts, giant mechanical monsters that felt like tremendous puzzle boxes. While some fans have since expressed a longing for a return to the classic Zelda formula, Breath of the Wild still left a huge impact at launch and topped numerous Game of the Year lists.
Three years later, fans are still interacting with the game in new and strange ways. Modder Waikuteru recently revealed on YouTube that they have modded an entire Mario Kart track into the beloved open world game. The track in question is Luigi Circuit, a simple, introductory course from the first tournament cup in Mario Kart Wii. In addition to adding the course to the game, Waikuteru programmed a whole minigame to go along with it. The minigame tasks players with jumping on the Master Cycle Zero (or attempting the course on foot) and trying to beat prearranged clear times. Waikuteru, who appears as an NPC in the mod, offers rewards based on how well the course is completed. To up the ante, Waikuteru has added numerous traps to the course, such as spiked pillars, electric Chuchus, and boulders.
Waikuteru is, like many Zelda fans, probably restless for more information on the Breath of the Wild sequel. The mysterious title was teased last year at E3 with a brief, tantalizing trailer, but no further news has been announced about the project since. It's not common for Nintendo to release direct sequels to Zelda games; the most notable precedent is Majora's Mask, a sequel to the franchise's first 3D title, Ocarina of Time. If the precedent holds, Breath of the Wild's sequel will likely be a truly phenomenal game.
Nintendo seems, for the moment, uninterested in giving fans more information on Breath of the Wild 2. With that in mind, fans are lucky to have people like Waikuteru, breathing new life into the mysterious sequel's iconic predecessor. The video game modding community has a long and proud history of bringing new, creative, and deeply strange additions to beloved video games. Most fans of Breath of the Wild probably never thought that the one thing the game was missing was a racetrack from Mario Kart Wii. But Waikuteru provided one anyway, and seems to have done a remarkable job. People who think they've seen everything there is to see in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild might just want to dust off their copy and make their way to the starting line.
Source: Waikuteru/YouTube