Mario Kart World Direct admits long-term memes by repeatedly throwing penguins off cliffs
Blog Andrew Joseph 17 Apr , 2025 0
During today’s Mario Kart World Direct Sales, we looked closely at many new tracks, features and racers including Penguin. We already know that Penguin has been in the game since its release last week, but today’s direct decision to play the blue beauty in a very specific meme… by throwing him off the cliff repeatedly.
This is not once, but twice In the direct process, fans pointed out on social media. Once, the penguin simply misjudged the curve and sailed neatly on the cold landscape:
Even Nintendo intentionally dropped the blue penguin from the cold ledge.#mariokartworld #mariokartworlddirect #Nintendo #switch2 pic.twitter.com/0emsue24jz
— Jonathan Leung (@vgmaps) April 17, 2025
But in a second, the nose moves more, free-roaming penguins drive directly from the cliff to the sea below, while the music of Super Mario 64 Toodles walks away in the background:
29 years later, we are still picking penguins from the cliff like Mario 64#mariokartworld pic.twitter.com/7klpg5rzkm
– 🔥fireshadow64🔥(price reduction) (@fireshadow64) April 17, 2025
If you're confused about why this is worth noting, allow me to draw attention to Super Mario 64's long-term community memes.
The Mario community has made the position famous for over a decade, so it's fun even if Nintendo is in some subtle, reasonable way of derogatory. Is this a terrible thing? Society still hasn't been neatly clean on one side or the other side of the Penguin Cliff debate. At least the Mario Kart world offers Penguins a nice little waterwheel so they can keep moving after landing.
Today’s Mario Kart Nintendo Direct is not the font for the new information that many people hope it will become, but we still know something about some interesting new content: More new things Roles, courses,,,,, Projects and featuresand close-up observation (provided by Penguin and others) New Open World Free Roaming mode, which will allow players to drive anywhere in the world without restrictions.
You can catch up Everything is announced here.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior journalist at IGN. You can find her post on bluesky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Is there a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
