Playing Mario Kart on a Nintendo 64 console is a universal thrill— but have you ever dreamed of taking your skills to real-life streets? Two New Yorkers, Caleb Simpson and Irving Salazar, have turned that curiosity into a reality. Spotted cruising through the streets of New York disguised in Mario and Luigi-Themed onesies, they’ve become a mobile attraction leaving spectators howling in laughter across the city.
Pranksters Simpson and Salazar are no strangers to making prank videos for the internet—Simpson is an avid TikToker with 3.8 million follower and a YouTube page. But their latest Mario Kart Prank video has gone viral since going up on August 14, with over 40,000 views on Youtube alone.
The four-minute clips shows the duo go-karting past NYC landmarks, and capturing the hilarious reactions from bystanders. Many pedestrians did double takes and had their phones held high to capture the absurd moment.
Instead of shredding through a racetrack on a space rainbow, their route has stretched far across the city including the West Village, Madison Square Park, Times Square, and Clinton Hill. And, instead of flinging red shells and spinning Mario’s mystery blocks, they’re dodged New York drivers, bikers and the NYPD. (They still threw the occasion banana peel at each other for the fun of it.)
The stunt required careful planning on the part of Simpson, who played Mario, along with his Luigi-impersonating accomplice to nail the video while keeping out of trouble with the NYPD.
“I thought it’d be funny,” Simpson told The New York Post, where he says the video was “logistically a pain in the ass.”
In the end, Simpson says they did the stunt to, “push some positivity and hopefully make the people laugh.”
And that they did. If go-karting as a Nintendo character has always been on your bucket list, take a page from these daring New Yorkers.
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