Luigi Death Stare Used In 'Mario Kart 8' Japanese Commercial

Nintendo used a clip of its infamous “Luigi Death Stare” in a recent Japanese television commercial for racer “Mario Kart 8.” The ad consists of a collection of race scenes with various characters, but shows Luigi giving an adorable Baby Rosalina the menacing stare as he zooms by her on one of the game’s 30 courses.

This is probably the first time the Japanese gaming company has directly embraced one of its own internet memes.

Meanwhile, “Mario Kart 8” continues to top the game charts, with more than 470,000 units moved last month on the Wii U. Though Ubisoft’s open world action-adventure game “Watch Dogs” actually outsold the Nintendo racer, “Mario Kart 8” sold the most games on a single platform, which means it has moved approximately 870,000 copies in the United States alone.

“These results reinforce the power of the ‘Mario Kart’ franchise and speak to a bright future for the Wii U platform,” Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of sales & marketing, told Forbes last week. “History has shown that ‘Mario Kart’ games tend to have an extremely long tail. We fully expect ‘Mario Kart 8’ to continue to drive momentum for our hardware and software business through the holidays and into the foreseeable future.”

According to Nintendo’s 74th Annual Shareholder’s Meeting in Japan last month, “Mario Kart 8” has sold 2 million copies worldwide, also boosting Wii U sales more than 90 percent compared to May of last year. It became the Wii U’s fastest-selling game with more than 1.2 million units sold worldwide within less than two weeks of its launch on May 30.