Nintendo has teamed up with Google to celebrate March 10, a.k.a. “Mar10 Day,” with a rad crossover. From now until next week, Mario Kart has overtaken Google Maps, letting users race around the world as they navigate to their destinations.
Yes, it’s not technically March 10 yet; consider “Mario Maps” the company’s early present to fans. You’ll have to update your Google Maps app in order to access the Mario Kart feature; you’ll then be able to click on a yellow Question Mark block to turn it on.
“Once enabled, you’ll see that the navigation arrow has morphed into—who else?—Mario,” reads a blog post from Google about the promo. “He’ll be a constant companion wherever you’re driving this week—to work, to school, or the spaghetti house. Just remember to practice safe driving on the road—we don’t encourage throwing bananas or red shells at other drivers in real life!”
It’s unclear what a “spaghetti house” is, but that’s beside the point.
Wahoo! Now you can navigate the world as Mario in @GoogleMaps to celebrate #MAR10Day! Check out #MarioMaps on Google Maps now for a week. pic.twitter.com/iX3uZMfLrc
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) March 9, 2018
Google is amenable to collaborating with Nintendo, and has done so in the past. The best version of this was an April Fools’ gag from 2014, where Pokémon were scattered across the Google Maps interface worldwide. If you found ’em you could catch ’em; the project was so successful that it helped inspire then-Google subsidiary Niantic to create Pokémon Go.