Mario porn ‘parody’ attracts Nintendo’s ire

Nintendo has taken legal action against a porn tribute to some of its most iconic characters.

The Japanese tech giant has filed a DMCA takedown notice against creators of a freeware game, called “Peach’s Untold Tale“, which shows Princess Peach, Mario, Luigi and many of their friends in some seriously NSFW situations.

The plot is standard Mario fayre – Bowser attacking, Kamek putting spells on people. You know the drill. The difference with this game, however, is that Mario is MIA and the spells are making the residents of the Mushroom Kingdom permanently horny.

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The upshot, is that Princess Peach has no choice but to put out, or shut up – not typical behaviour from a character who is usually only seen as she’s being kidnapped at the start of the game.

The game has been floating around the internet since 2012, but with Mario celebrating his 35th birthday in the coming months, it seems Nintendo has had enough of its intellectual property being abused this way – historically, the video game stalwart rivals Disney for its level of asexuality.

The real issue, however, is that under DMCA rules, a parody is allowed – otherwise half the porn remakes in history would have been illegal. Nintendo is arguing that representing its characters in this light goes beyond any “fair use” exemption, and goes on to list all the infringements, ranging from the good Princess herself (of course), through to more tangential connections like Super Smash Brothers.

Ultimately, Nintendo has decided that this has gone beyond parody into copyright infringement (not to mention bringing a Princess into disrepute) and is insisting on the complete removal of the game from the internet – including the source code which is currently available on GitHub.

Meanwhile, over on Animal Crossing, another megahit Nintendo franchise, there’s still plenty of scope for sexualisation, whilst Pokemon has also had the porn treatment in the past.

But for real first-person sex in a video game, you’ve only got to wait a bit longer for Cyberpunk 2077.

So far, there’s been no response from the developer.

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