Nintendo has really been eyeing up the multimedia scene recently. Outside of video games, the company has been dipping its toes into big-budget Hollywood films, Lego sets, and, most exciting of all, theme parks.
So far, Universal Studios and Nintendo’s theme park project, Super Nintendo World, has been a massive hit with gamers and park goers alike, with thrilling attractions based onSuper Mario, Yoshi, and Donkey Kong Country. That said, we can’t help but feel like some of Nintendo’s other IPs could make for equally immersive attractions. Here are just a few classic IPs we’d love to see come to Super Nintendo World in ride form.
9Metroid
A Little Scary For The Kids, But We’d Be First In Line
Universal Studios is no stranger to themed roller coasters. Velocicoaster, Flying Dinosaur, and Revenge of the Mummy are all incredible coasters that manage to be both seriously thrillingand fully immersive. Super Nintendo World is currently filled with family rides, so an ultra-intense thrill ride would really help round things out, and nothing says thrills quite like the Metroid series.
Just think about a Metroid: Dread themed coaster with animatronic E.M.M.I. encounters throughout or a Metroid Prime themed ride with a terrifying Meta-Ridley encounter towards the end.With a series like Metroidand modern roller coaster tech only getting better with time, the possibilities for an intense Metroid roller coaster seem endless.
8F-Zero
A Potential Record Breaker
F-Zero might not be the most fan-favorite Nintendo IP, but if Nintendo and Universal played their cards right, an F-Zero themed roller coaster could both draw in massive crowds to the park and revitalize the series at the same time. How you ask? Well, it’s all in F-Zero’s signature speed.
Currently, the world’s fastest roller coaster is Formula Rossa at Ferarri World (yes, there’s actually a Ferarri theme park), which hits a top speed of 149.1 miles per hour. Granted, building a faster ride would be tough with the land limitations of Universal Studios Hollywood and Japan, but that’s not an issue for the Florida location, and laying claim to the world’s fastest coaster is more than enough to draw in massive crowdsand new F-Zero fansas well.
7Animal Crossing
If You’re Going To Have A Gift Shop Anyway…
There’s a lot of potential in the Animal Crossing series for theme park presence. Why the gift shop in Super Nintendo World isn’t already themed to Nook’s Cranny or the Able Sisters is a mystery to us, but we say go one step further than just one shop and make an entire shopping district out of it, like Downtown Disney at the Disney Parks, complete with somecharacter meet and greets like KK Slider.
No Nintendo fan worth their salt would skip the chance to grab a coffee at a real-world version of The Roost or buy some new threads at the Able Sisters' shop. Given how big a deal Animal Crossing has become for the big N and the family-friendly esthetics, it’s rather surprising to not see the IP anywhere in the park, and we say that needs to change, ASAP.
6Star Fox
Do A Barrel Roll
As tempting as it would be to make a B&M Star Fox flying coaster complete with Arwing themed trains and at least one actual barrel roll, we think we might have a better idea. Disney’s Star Tours attraction is a fantastic sci-fi flight simulator with multiple branching pathways built in, which basically already makes it Star Fox 64 minus the Star Fox coat of paint, if you really think about it.
Taking a page from the Star Tours attraction at Disneyland, riders could experience what it’s really like to fly an Arwing from within the cockpit and experience a different mission scenario each time they ride, which would make for a nice mid-day ride to experience in between riding more signature attractions at the park. Really though,as long as we can have the barrel roll, we’ll take what we can get.
5Kirby
A Food Themed Family Coaster
Kirby is wonderful because, realistically, you could probably just give Kirby an entire theme park just for him. He’d fit right in to literally any attraction you could ever want. The car from Kirby and the Forgotten Land could make for a nice bumper car attraction, Air Ride could be a launched coaster, you could have a Waddle Dee merry-go-round with a station building themed to Castle Dedede, etc.
Having said that, if it were us, we’d make a nice family spinning coaster with cars themed to warp stars and base the story on Spring Breeze from Kirby Super Star. That, or a family racing coaster themed to the Gourmet Race. Either way, a nice Kirby coaster could be really enticing as a middle ground for those still too afraid to take on the likes of Velocicoaster.
4Kid Icarus
Fight Alongside Pit In An Indoor Shooting Ride
Again, looking to Disney parks for inspiration, imaginea story drivenversion of Toy Story Midway Mania. Shoot down hoards of monsters as Pit and Lady Palutena cheer you on, compete with other riders to hit the most targets, and, toward the end, hold on tight for some 3D motion simulator action as you join Pit in the fight against Hades himself!
We’d love the chance to hear more of Antony Del Rio’s Pit alongside the rest of the fantastic cast of Kid Icarus: Uprising. A fun family shooting game in ride form would be a real treat for Nintendo fans. Given how successful similar styled rides have done in the past, we’re positive a Kid Icarus themed take on the concept would really do well at Super Nintendo World.
3Luigi’s Mansion
Not So Happy Haunts Materialize
Now this one just seems obvious. Luigi may be from the Mushroom Kingdom, but the plumber in green has really come into his own, to the point where it’s pretty much a given at this point that theLuigi’s Mansion series of gamesis its own IP within Nintendo’s library, one we’re absolutely dying to see make the transition to theme park attraction.
Luigi’s Mansion Arcade already feels a lot like an amusement park ride, so simply adding an arcade to Super Nintendo World and putting Luigi’s Mansion in it would do just fine, but if we’re being honest, we’d much rather a Haunted Mansion style dark ride featuring the classic portrait ghosts and an absolutely terrified Luigi to guide us through the whole adventure. It’d be a perfect fit for the park.
2Pikmin
A Microscopic Adventure
There are already Pikmin hidden throughout Super Nintendo Land, at least in Japan, and that makes the lack of any Pikmin themed rides or attractions at Super Nintendo Land especially odd. As for what you’d do with a Pikmin attraction at a theme park, well, that depends on how you define an attraction.
If you consider finding hidden Mickeys at Disney parks an attraction, then finding Super Nintendo World’s hidden Pikmin is an attraction, too. If you want a real ride, though, we say make Pikmin a slow-moving ride. Riders could be “shrunk down” by some sort of special effect and ride slowly through the world of Pikmin,spotting classic enemiesand locations from the series along the way.
1The Legend Of Zelda
The Hero’s Journey
No, unfortunately an Ocarina wouldn’t help you skip the time it would take to wait in line for what would almost certainly be the park’s most popular attraction. But for our money, Ocarina of Time wouldn’t be a bad game to base the inevitable Zelda themed attraction off of at Super Nintendo World, though the story would have to be heavily summarized for it to work in ride form.
There is already a fantasy castle at Universal Studios, one that contains the exact type of ride we’d expect The Legend of Zelda experience to be. But if you ask us, Hyrule would be a much better fit for that area than what Universal is currently using that land for, so we say a grand retheme is in order. Drop the wizardry and give us a Zelda area to explore, and we’d have a near-perfect theme park on our hands.
