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'Super Mario' Theme Park Opens in Japan

The attraction is part of the existing Universal Studios Japan amusement park in the western city of Osaka. Reuters
The attraction is part of the existing Universal Studios Japan amusement park in the western city of Osaka. Reuters
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'Super Mario' Theme Park Opens in Japan

The attraction is part of the existing Universal Studios Japan amusement park in the western city of Osaka. Reuters
The attraction is part of the existing Universal Studios Japan amusement park in the western city of Osaka. Reuters

Here we go! After months of pandemic delays, Nintendo's first ever theme park, featuring a "Mario Kart" ride in a real-life Bowser's Castle, opened in Japan on Thursday to delighted fans.

The attraction, whose bright, block-like surroundings are straight out of the classic "Super Mario" games, is part of the existing Universal Studios Japan amusement park in the western city of Osaka.

"We perfectly recreated the world of the game.... You'll find life-sized piranha plants and Bowser, and you'll see what it is like to be Mario," said Ayumu Yamamoto, USJ's marketing communication manager.

"It took almost a year longer than we had expected to open this place, and we are really glad," he told reporters at a preview on Wednesday.

The new zone called "Super Nintendo World" had originally been expected to draw big crowds last year ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, which was also postponed by the coronavirus.

But its launch was pushed back to February, and then delayed again as Japan's government declared a state of emergency in early 2021 to curb spiking cases.

Music from the popular Mario games plays throughout the park and a smartphone-linked wristband allows visitors to collect virtual coins by punching blocks, just like the Italian plumber.

Augmented reality goggles attached to a plastic red visor are used in the "Mario Kart" ride, one of the park's main draws that promises to bring the racing game to life.

The ride follows a track around the foreboding castle of Mario's enemy Bowser, an evil turtle, but each seat has a steering wheel and players can collect and shoot items at opponents.

The zone also boasts a ride based on the cute green dinosaur Yoshi, a Peach's castle, Mario-themed restaurants and lifesize characters from the Mushroom Kingdom.

Fans told AFP they were thrilled about the much-anticipated opening of the park, which cost more than 60 billion yen ($550 million), according to USJ.

"I've been playing Mario since I was a boy. I didn't expect that I could enter the world of Mario, so I'm very excited," said Hiroki Kono, a 19-year-old university student in Osaka.

- 'Waited for this day' -

Office worker Rei Higashimoto, 25, was also delighted about the launch. "I have an annual pass, so I knew this Mario world was being created, and I have waited from one year ago for this day to come," she said.

Similar areas are planned at Universal Studios parks in Orlando and Hollywood.

The first "Super Mario Bros" game came out in 1985 for Nintendo's NES console.

The platform game, in which Mario runs and jumps past obstacles to collect coins and save Princess Peach from the evil Koopa turtles, was based on the "Mario Bros" arcade game released earlier.

Since then, Mario has appeared in myriad formats including games featuring racing, football and golf.

Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of "Super Mario Bros", took a tour of the park in a promotional video released in December.

"At last, it's complete! It makes a big impression, seeing the park in real life," said Miyamoto, describing himself as Mario's "Dad" as he popped out of a giant green pipe.

"There are smaller activities like the coin block, as well as bigger ones... If you manage to get three keys from various activities, you can take on the final activity -- a battle with Bowser Jr."

"I'm very excited for all of you to experience the park on your own," he added.

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Riley Keough Felt a Duty to Finish Lisa Marie Presley’s Book on Elvis, Grief, Addiction and Love

Riley Keough, left, and her mother Lisa Marie Presley arrive at the 24th annual ELLE Women in Hollywood Awards on Oct. 16, 2017, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
Riley Keough, left, and her mother Lisa Marie Presley arrive at the 24th annual ELLE Women in Hollywood Awards on Oct. 16, 2017, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
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Riley Keough Felt a Duty to Finish Lisa Marie Presley’s Book on Elvis, Grief, Addiction and Love

Riley Keough, left, and her mother Lisa Marie Presley arrive at the 24th annual ELLE Women in Hollywood Awards on Oct. 16, 2017, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
Riley Keough, left, and her mother Lisa Marie Presley arrive at the 24th annual ELLE Women in Hollywood Awards on Oct. 16, 2017, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

Riley Keough was quick to agree to help complete her mother’s memoir. She thought they’d write it together, reflecting on her extraordinary upbringing and life, but it became a much greater responsibility after Lisa Marie Presley's sudden death in 2023.

Finishing the task her mother — the only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley and a recording artist in her own right — had started years earlier elicited "all kinds of emotions," Keough said in an interview with The Associated Press ahead of the book’s release Tuesday.

"It just felt like a kind of a duty that I had to complete for her," Keough said. "I’m just happy that it’s done and that it’ll be in the world and there for people to read."

"From Here to the Great Unknown" is named in a nod to the moving lyrics of Presley’s "Where No One Stands Alone," a song Lisa Marie recorded as a duet with her father over 50 years after he first released it and over 40 years after his death.

The book touches on themes of "love and loss and grief and mothers and daughters and addiction," Keough said, adding it was conceived as a way for Lisa Marie to tell her story in her own words and connect with others.

Much of the book is indeed in Lisa Marie’s words, as Keough faithfully listened to recordings of her mother recounting memories and experiences both big and small. Lisa Marie wrote openly about the day her father died, her relationship with her mother, her marriage to Michael Jackson, her struggles with addiction and her son Benjamin’s death in 2020, among many other parts of her life.

Although Lisa Marie's life had been tabloid fodder since days after her birth, her memoir details intimate moments at Graceland, including how she feared for Presley's health as a young girl. In the chapter titled "He's Gone," she wrote that as a child, she often worried about her father dying and even wrote a poem with the line "I hope my daddy doesn't die."

She also wrote that Graceland became a "free-for-all" the day of Presley's death in 1977, with those at the house taking jewelry and personal items "before he was even pronounced dead."

Lisa Marie's frank writing extends into the section focused on her headline-making marriage to Jackson from 1994 to 1996. She wrote that Jackson confessed his love for her while she was still married to Keough, and that him wanting to have children with her, along with his increasing reliance on prescription medications, is what fractured their relationship.

Keough said hearing her mother’s voice in the recordings was at times "heartbreaking," but she enjoyed listening to happy memories, like how her parents met and fell in love. Keough is one of two children Lisa Marie had with her first husband, musician Danny Keough, along with their late son Benjamin.

"It makes me want to tell everyone to talk to their parents and record them telling all the stories about how they met and all these things because it’s just very cool to have," she said.

Keough’s role was to fill in parts of Lisa Marie’s story that she hadn’t gotten to before her death in January 2023 from a small bowel obstruction caused by bariatric surgery she had years prior. Some of those gaps included lighter moments and happy memories from her mother’s adult life.

"Until my mom’s addiction, really, which was when I was 25, I think we would all say that we had a really beautiful and exceptionally lucky and wonderful life," Keough said. "I wouldn’t define our lives, collectively, as a tragedy. I think that there is so much more."

And while those funnier, lighthearted moments, like Lisa Marie zipping through Graceland on her golf cart and Keough playing hooky from school to hang out with her mother, are detailed throughout the book, Keough said Lisa Marie wanted to write about grief and about the loss of her son.

Writing about her experience grieving her brother and detailing his death by suicide "wasn’t something that came super naturally" to Keough, but she said she knew her mother wouldn’t have shied away from it. Lisa Marie wrote that she wanted to honor her son by sparking frank conversations about suicide, addiction and mental health.

"How do I heal?" Lisa Marie writes in the book. "By helping people."

For Keough, much of her life now has revolved around learning to live with grief and cope with the monumental losses she’s faced.

"My last four years have just been grief, like so much grief. But it’s just something that I walk around with. You just have a broken heart, and that’s just the way it is, and you just learn to live with these holes and the sadness and the pain and the love and the yearning and the missing and the confusion and all of it," Keough said. "It’s very complicated. I think that you just have to try and allow it to be there."

While being the daughter of the King of Rock & Roll and much of Lisa Marie's life consisted of singular experiences, but Keough said all her mother wanted through her memoir to "connect with people on a human level.

"Her goal was to tell her story so that people could relate and feel less alone in the world, which is why I think we tell stories," Keough said. "So, that’s my goal."