YOUR HOMETOWN — During a recent session of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, you noticed that the map you were currently getting blasted on was an exact model of your home, sources confirm.

“I was doing really good, okay,” you claimed. “There I was cruising along this new map in first place when I noticed one of the pictures on the wall looked a lot like my mother. I figured it was some kind of Freudian thing and didn’t think much of it but as I rounded the corner and drove into what looked like my exact living room I was justifiably scared shitless. It threw off my whole game. That’s why I lost!”

Andy Jackson, an investigative specialist for the FBI, revealed that were not the only individual whose home was adapted into a cartoon racetrack.

“This is one of a number of cases we’ve received about this issue,” said Jackson. “Some people are saying, ‘Hey, what’s the harm? It’s pretty cool to see my home alongside tracks like Coconut Mall and DK Mountain.’ I ask these people to please think of the ramifications. Sure, it’s cool to have Mario and Peach racing across your home office, but you Red Shell the wrong kid, and—boom!—he lands right on your exposed tax documents. Next thing you know the whole lobby is going crazy about your W-2’s” 

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa released a statement responding to the controversy.

“We at Nintendo value above all us the safety and well being of our customers,” wrote Furukawa. “We seek to create joy and bring happiness through our games. Many players have expressed concern with the recent digital adaptation of their personal physical spaces, and we hear you. But this is nothing new in the current gaming marketplace. If you think Zuckerburg isn’t sending data from your Oculus to furniture manufacturers overseas, then we here at Nintendo have a Mushroom Bridge to sell you. So everyone just relax and remember how cool Tears of the Kingdom was.” 

At press time, Nintendo encouraged you and all Mario Kart players to stay safe, wear clothes around the house, and generally make your living spaces less visibly depressing.

The post New Mario Kart Course an Eerily Accurate Map of Your Home appeared first on Hard Drive.

This post is about my ruder Scribbly G cartoons and my thoughts and challenges in making rude cartoons. If you’d like to see more, click Read More—otherwise, keep on scrolling. I’ve loved rude cartoons for as long as I can remember. I love anything you’re not supposed to talk about. When I got into cartooning, […]

“It’s not cake!” my wife screamed as the cleaver split the thermostat in our foyer. I pushed past her and sank my chef’s knife into the Ethan Allen sofa we had bought when we moved. Goose down spilled out of the gash. I looked at my wife and grimaced.

“Not cake!” our children screeched as they danced in the floating feathers.

Seven days prior, we had been selected for a new Netflix game show, Is It Cake? Extreme Home Edition. Once we’d signed the paperwork, we spent one night at the La Quinta off the interstate while the producers replaced one item in our home with a perfect replica made of cake. We had to find the cake within seven days in order to win the grand prize of $75,000. Our time would be up at sunset today, and the sun was getting very low in the sky.

“Hurry!” my wife shrieked. “Where is the cake?”

I tried to think. I had sledgehammered the pet memorial markers in the backyard to make sure no cake was hidden inside of them. My wife had crashed her Passat into my parked Honda Pilot to make sure the cars were not cake. After the children had gone to bed on Day 6, I had torn apart our modest collection of sex toys. Still no cake.

“Maybe the safe?” I yelled at my wife. “Did we look in the safe?”

We hurried to our bedroom and opened the safe hidden behind her boots. I punched in the code, and the door swung open. The contents all looked in order, but how could we be sure? I grabbed the handgun—it didn’t feel like cake, but there was only one way to know. I raised the gun above my head and fired four shots in rapid succession. The noise was deafening.

“What the fuck?!” Todd the cameraman shouted. “What is wrong with you? The gun is not cake!”

I eyed him. Was it part of his job to trick me? Was the fifth bullet cake? I squeezed off the rest of the clip, shooting skyward. Drywall rained down on us. The ceiling was not cake.

“I am fucking leaving!” the cameraman screamed into his headset as he backed out of the room. I was sure he was going to run back to the production van parked in front of our house, probably to stare at the piece of paper that described what item in our house was cake and to laugh at us.

My wife was holding the manilla envelope we had filled with paper bonds—our life savings.

“Is this cake?” she asked pleadingly.

“I don’t know,” I said. “We will be able to tell if we burn it.”

We emptied the $427,000 worth of bonds into our bathroom wastebasket. I grabbed one of the fart matches and threw it into the pile.

“Is it burning like paper or cake?” my wife asked desperately.

I looked closely at it. How did a cake burn? Ashes floated up around me. I leaned in further and inhaled deeply. I smelled no burnt sugar.

“Not cake,” I said quietly.

Tearing my clothes off, I ran to the front of the house. My children and wife followed. “Everyone, take your clothes off,” I screamed over my shoulder. “All of them—make sure they aren’t cake!”

We emerged from the house naked, and surrounded the production van. I climbed onto the hood and pressed my butt cheeks against the windshield.

“Does it feel like cake to your butt cheeks?” my wife howled.

“I can’t tell!” I cried and pressed my butt cheeks harder into the glass. I hopped down and shouted commands at my family.

“Everyone: put your hands on the van’s side—smallest ones in the middle! Now, rock the van to see if it’s cake!”

Our bare bodies worked in unison, shoving hard. We were on the door side, and the production team was trying to open it and escape.

“Don’t let them out!” I screamed. “They might be a jam filling!”

We rocked the van back and forth, pushing its center of gravity farther and farther outside of its axis until, finally, it crashed on its side. Glass and plastic covered the street.

“It’s not cake!” my wife sobbed, balling up her fists and slamming them against the tires.

I turned around and saw the last slivers of light coming across the horizon. My neighbor Brad emerged from his house.

“What in the heck, Dominic? What are you doing out here? Why don’t any of you have any clothes on, for Pete’s sake?”

My mind reeled. I grabbed the side mirror that had broken off the van and smashed it on the ground, giving it a jagged edge.

“You’re the fucking cake, aren’t you, Brad?”

Brad backed away, raising his palms to me. “Dominic, can a frankfurting cake talk? What has gotten into you?”

It was a persuasive argument. I lowered the mirror and looked down at my naked body. I was bleeding. My children sat on the pavement in a huddled mass, weeping. It was nighttime.

I looked up and saw Howie Mandel, the host of Is It Cake? Extreme Home Edition.

“We did not find the cake, Howie,” I said.

Mandel stared back, disgusted. Police sirens wailed and drew closer.

“You’re going to jail, Dominic.”

I thought for a moment.

“Is the jail cake?”