Real Nintendo Land? Mario coming to Universal Studios
Culture
You may soon be able to visit a real life Nintendo Land.
I'm Bridget Carey, this is you CNET update.
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Nintendo Is making a financial turnaround.
The company announced sales of Wii U and games are up compared to last year.
The struggling video game maker did better than expected.
Nintendo reported its first operating profit in four years.
Part of that is thanks to the success of Mario Cart eight and Super Smash Brothers, and of course, the amiibo toys are hot.
Nintendo has apologized for the shortage of figurines, which work similar to Skylander's or Disney Infinity.
But that's not all.
Mario is making a big jump into new territory.
The video game characters of Nintendo are coming to Universal Studios theme park.
The partnership, announced Thursday, did not include Details like which characters will be features or what franchises will get rides.
Those details are still being worked out.
This could be for the parks in Hollywood or Orlando, or even Japan and Singapore.
There are so many attraction possibilities.
Nintendo and Universal, if you're listening, I'd like to offer a few ideas.
Of course you can create a life-size Mario Kart raceway, but there also needs to be a ride where you strap yourself to a Yoshi to travel through green Green pipes.
Then, you grab lunch at Kirby's Diner, followed by a visit to Luigi's haunted mansion, and of course, the park's top thrill ride will be a Starfox rollercoaster, complete with multiple barrel rolls.
And the kitties can't leave without picking up their souvenir official Zelda seal, but you know, Universal Orlando just announced this week there's a new King Kong attraction coming out next year So poor Donkey Kong won't be the top Ape in town.
And moving on to story that may seem more terrifying than Bowser, the first self driving semi-truck gets a license to drive in Las Vegas, that's right, a commercial big rig can steer and drive itself.
Aside from Optimus Prime this is the first self-driving commercial truck with a license to operate on public highways.
Made by Freightliner.
The 18-wheeler can maintain a cruising speed while watching for other vehicles, lane markers, and signs using 3D cameras and radar at the front of the truck.
It uses similar technology to the self-driving car recently showed-off by Mercedes Benz.
Which just so happens to be a sister company.
You still need a human in the seat to start the truck if it's stopped and to handle low speed traffic.
And if, for any reason, the conditions are poor, or there are no markings on the road, the truck's gonna alert the driver to take over.
Nevada was the first state in the US to create rules for self driving cars, and it gives these vehicles a special red license plate.
That's your tech news update.
You can head over to cnet.com for more and follow along on Twitter.
From our studios in New York, I'm Bridget Carey.
