Published Apr 11, 2026, 3:00 PM EDT
Kevin Phelan has covered arts and entertainment for over a decade and is currently serving as a Reporter for Screen Rant's Comics team.
His pre-SR work can be seen in places like USA Today, The Huffington Post, Cracked.com, The A.V. Club, and Looper. He spends way too much time trying to decide who actually wrote Johnny B. Goode if Chuck Berry learned it from Marty McFly after Marty McFly first learned it from Chuck Berry.
When he's not working, Kevin can usually be found telling his dog, Harley Quinn, how good of a girl she is.
As two of Nintendo's most iconic characters, the eponymous Mario and The Legend of Zelda's Link have crossed paths plenty of times. From brawling in Super Smash Bros. to burning rubber in Mario Kart, to Link becoming a playable character in Super Mario Maker 2, the Nintendo mascots have a storied history together.
But what is maybe the pair's strangest crossover didn't happen in a video game. It appeared in an obscure German comic book from a 1996 issue of Club Nintendo magazine, the country's answer to Nintendo Power.
In Mario in Mariozilla, Mario grows to kaiju-like proportions after a spell from Kamek goes wrong. The now-gargantuan plumber decides to seek help from Dr. Light in New York City, and that's when things go horribly wrong.
Mario Versus Manhattan
There's no way of talking around it. Mario accidentally knocks over the Twin Towers. As outrageous as it may sound, a lighthearted 1996 comic featured Nintendo's most famous character accidentally destroying the World Trade Center five years before 9/11.
Mario does eventually find Dr. Light, who happens to be hanging out with Link at the time, but not before he completely destroys the entire city.
A translated passage from the original comic reads, "Sadly, Mario cannot avoid one or two missteps on his way. New York lies in ashes..."
Link serves as little more than a cameo in the story, but the fact that he makes his appearance as Mario is casually knocking down skyscrapers and (presumably) stomping on tourists, makes this probably the most unfortunate crossover the characters have ever seen.
It's hard to imagine Link being in the mood for go-karts after he just witnessed Mario level much of Manhattan.
Mario's Comic Lore Runs Deep (And Weird)
While Mario in Mariozilla may be one of the more remarkable entries in the franchise's canon, there have been plenty of comics to supplement the adventures of the mustachioed plumber, and some of them get even stranger. One 1991 storyline from Valiant Comics' Super Mario Bros. series, for example, sees the hero burst out of a Game Boy and battle his digital enemies in our real world. Along the way, he also thwarts a kidnapping and stops the theft of the Space Shuttle.
Mario's universe, whether in video games, in movies, or on the pages of a comic book, is, and always has been, inherently weird. Considering the character has been around for more than 40 years and has literally traveled across galaxies, the franchise has always leaned into the outrageous to find new and creative ways to tell stories, no matter how bizarre they might be. And with Nintendo's extensive roster of iconic characters, it's nice to see a familiar face pop up once in a while, even if it's during a catastrophe.
No matter how cringe-inducing it may be in hindsight, Mario in Mariozilla remains not only an early crossover between two of the most seminal video game characters in history, but also a deeply strange addition to more than four decades of lore.
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