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PROVO — For any Nintendo 64 fan, Mario Kart was less of a game and more of a lifestyle. Marathon sessions riding through Rainbow Road and dodging slippery banana peels were a staple in most millennials' downtime growing up.
Three Utahns banded together to combine their love of the popular party game and the resurgence of the Star Wars craze in a new video mashup that shows Mario racing through the galaxy in an x-wing in classic Nintendo style.
The three who make up the production company Dark Pixel (formerly known as Warialasky) are BYU film school grad Casen Sperry, his brother Landon — who also went to the Y — and their longtime friend Mike Brown who attended Utah Valley University. Casen said the video has been a long time in the making for the Utah County crew.
"We first came up with the concept for this video about a year ago," he said in an email interview with KSL.com. "We tried to make something Mario related that could coincide with the new Star Wars release. Unfortunately, we missed the window because it took us so long."
Combining the two genres only seemed natural for Dark Pixel.
"We have a great passion for video games and grew up playing games like Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart, as well as watching the Star Wars movies," Casen said.
When watching the three-minute Star Kart clip, it's easy to see why it took a year's worth of work. The team said that one of the challenges of producing it was getting everything to look uniform and mastering the necessary programs. When asked about his favorite shot in the video sequence, Casen said it was during the moments where the ships exit hyperspace to "texture the planet realistically. The Dark Pixel crew used actual photos from NASA to give it the look they wanted.
The Dark Pixel team is no stranger to going viral and first saw popularity with their Lazy Jedi video from January 2012. They were officially an Internet sensation after their 2013 Super Mario Parkour video got over 34 million views.
The Sperry brothers and Brown have been making videos together since the late 90s, according to Casen. The three went to college together after taking time off to separately serve missions for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and picked up where they left off in the video world upon returning home.
You can subscribe to the Dark Pixel channel on YouTube to catch any new uploads from the talented team. Word on the street is they're working on a follow-up to their popular Mario Parkour video.
