10 Insane Marketing Stunts That Were Used To Sell Video Games

A franchise as famous as Mario Kart hardly needs help selling millions of copies, but with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Nintendo went the extra mile to ensure their game reached the widest audience possible.

This particular iteration of the colourful kart racer was launching on the Nintendo Switch, the company's successor to the disappointing Wii U. The Switch simply had to succeed in order to avoid another Wii U-style embarrassment, and as such, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - a game with the power to shift consoles - had to perform well commercially, which led to Nintendo developing an expansive (and expensive) year-long marketing campaign.

Included in this push was the decision to physically alter the very stores that would be selling copies of the game. In the weeks leading up to the title's launch, Target stores across the U.S. were decked out to fit into the Mario Kart world: trolleys were decorated like karts, stickers were plastered on windows, and giant Mario/Luigi spheres were placed outside entrances.

But best of all were the automatic entrance doors, which played the "3, 2, 1, GO" race countdown noise whenever a customer walked through them.

Normally, shops might have a couple of standees dotted around the place, but a full-on makeover is something you hardly ever see, which made this all the more impressive.