Nintendo teams up with Universal for something close to a real-life Nintendo Land

By Kris Wouk Published May 7, 2015

It’s been a year of new things for Nintendo. March saw the company partnering with DeNA to develop future mobile games, and now the company is embarking on a venture that it has only hinted at before.

Nintendo and Universal announced today that the “world of Nintendo” would be coming to Universal theme parks. “The agreement brings two icons of entertainment together and represents a significant partnership for Nintendo as it expands the reach and popularity of its characters and intellectual property,” the press release states.

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“The immersive experiences will include major attractions at Universal’s theme parks and will feature Nintendo’s most famous characters and games,” the press release continues. The possibilities this brings to life are exciting to say the least.

Many of the worlds and characters in Nintendo’s games seem to be made for exactly this type of thing, and a rough blueprint for a Nintendo theme park already exists in 2012’s Nintendo Land. Essentially a mini-game collection, Nintendo Land saw players making their way though a virtual theme park.

For those keeping a close eye on Nintendo, this might not come as a surprise. “Countless times, the idea of a theme park has been debated and discussed, and there have been rumors in various forms,” Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said in 2010, Kotaku reports. “But at the present moment, there are no concrete plans.” Of course, this is less a Nintendo theme park than it is Nintendo IP coming to another theme park.

There are few concrete details at this time, and there is no word of when we might begin to see the results of this deal in action. The press release concludes with “more details will be announced in the future, as the Nintendo and Universal creative teams work to create specific concepts.”

If you’re wondering where these attractions will be available, there are Universal theme parks located in Los Angeles and Orlando in the U.S., as well as in Osaka and Singapore. New parks are also in the works in Beijing and Moscow.

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Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…

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