If you think the box art for Mario Party: Star Rush looks a bit familiar, you aren’t alone. However, it should be noted that this box art may be an early placeholder and not the final cover art. Regardless, Twitter user Jirachi’s World posted another image along side the box art shown above. It turns out this box art has previously appeared on a Spaghetti Os can, among other places.
There are some little differences between the two. The circular border around the characters is a flat blue band on the can, but on the box art, it is a much more interesting looking gold border. The color of Toad’s vest was changed in the box art, and a number block was added on top of Mario’s right hand. Is this recycling of art lazy? I’m inclined to think so.
It should also be noted that this is far from the first time. Mario character renders are reused all the time by Nintendo. To a degree, it does make sense when you have a franchise like Mario, where the appearances of characters don’t change too much over time. So this recycling of art could save a lot of time and money, but for a huge company like Nintendo, is that really excusable? I’ve leave that for you to decide.
At first, the image above just looks innocent enough, right? It’s the Bowser Amiibo from the Mario Amiibo Set. But Twitter user, Henry Perez, posted a response in the comments on Jirachi’s World’s Twitter post about the recycled graphics in the Mario Party: Star Rush box art. Henry’s post shows that this Amiibo is using a pose from a stock Bowser character render that Nintendo had lying around in their library of Mario art. And this image, too, has appeared on a Spaghetti Os can.
It’s clear that Nintendo likes to reuse art in the Mario franchise, and it’s easy to do since the appearances of the characters don’t change that much over time. Of course, this would never fly for franchises like The Legend of Zelda, where different games have different art styles. If you look around at various Mario art for different games and things, you can find reused Mario character renders in a lot of places.
So yes, it seems Nintendo is a bit lazy when it comes to Mario art at times. This doesn’t really seem all that excusable coming from a huge company that could easily afford to make custom art for Mario Party: Star Rush‘s box art if they wanted to.
