That Time There Were Phallic Rocks on Peach Beach

Video game design is both a creative and rigorous process, and there are so many little details that go into each character design and level layout. The same is true for Mario Kart, and the series has seen over one hundred unique characters during the years and even more unique stages, some of which have even seen remakes and remasters in later Mario Karts. But not all tracks are created equally, and some come off as a bit sillier than others. Peach Beach happens to be one of those tracks.

This is that time there were phallic rocks on Peach Beach.

In 2003, Nintendo released what was simply seen at the time as yet another Mario Kart title. Mario Kart: Double Dash changed the game up a little by creating teams of two on each kart, meaning you got to select two characters en route to earning that gold trophy at the end of the Star Cup.

Everything seemed relatively normal until players began noticing an anomaly on Peach Beach, a really fun track that takes place on Delfino Plaza, the main hub for Super Mario Sunshine. Since Super Mario Sunshine was the hot, new Mario title on the GameCube, it was clear that a stage inspired by the game would be featured in Mario Kart: Double Dash.

Yes, there is a glitch just before the finish line where the player has to use a Mushroom to clip a tree to the right of the track that allows the player to then land on the beach below and skip lots of the course, but that is not the anomaly.

This is:

Do you notice something? I mean, yeah, there is not a whole lot going on here in regards to Mario Kart items and such, but… do you see something? No, not the beautifully rendered Delfino Plaza in the background. Seriously, do you see it?

Yeah. That rock formation looks quite peculiar.

While playing Peach Beach normally, you may not even notice the phallic pink rocks, because Mario Kart is a fast-paced racing game where much of your peripheral is focused on the other racers and getting more items. With that in mind, it is quite easy to hide something like this in plain sight.

Honestly, even from close up, it does not look like much, but when you get an eagle eye view of Peach Beach, it becomes abundantly clear what this rock formation looks like.

What makes this gag even funnier is that Nintendo decided to include the track in Mario Kart Wii, the 2008 sequel to Double Dash, completely unedited, which means Nintendo not only put a lovely inside joke in the GameCube version but also included it in the the Wii version, which is the greatest selling Mario Kart game of all time (Still roughly 2 million units ahead of Mario Kart 8).

This means that the higher ups at Nintendo were not satisfied by the volume of people they gotcha’d on the GameCube. They wanted millions more to be mesmerized by the dong-shaped Peach Beach rock, and they did so on one of the best selling systems in Nintendo history.

All right. Jokes aside, I am not sure whether this was intentional or not, but it definitely exists… not just once, but twice. At the end of the day, it is up to you to decide if this was an elaborate joke by Nintendo, an unintentional design that was used twice without editing, or an unintentional design that later become a massive joke on the Wii.

For me, that’s a wiener. Plain and simple. I just can’t see it any other way.

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Thank you for stopping by Nintendo Link and enjoying this “That Time” article. What do you think about this rock on Peach Beach? Are you of the opinion that this was intentional? Let us know what you think in the comments below! Happy gaming, everyone.