A company manufactures mats faithfully designed after Nintendo DS game cartridges as well as those of other consoles.
An online rug company has launched a range of rugs designed to look like Nintendo DS cartridges. Almost 20 years after its first release, the Nintendo DS has a strong legacy with gamers around the world and remains not only the best-selling Nintendo console, but also the best-selling handheld console of all time.
Nintendo’s portable consoles have always been very successful. After the Game Boy Advance put a bow on the Game Boy line of systems, the DS was next. In its heyday, the DS was incredibly popular and took the handheld gaming market by storm almost immediately thanks to the lineup of Nintendo DS launch titles that included a handheld remake of the 3D platforming masterpiece. Super Mario 64. As this was before the days of widespread digital distribution, cartridges were the primary means of playing games on the DS.
Similar to what happened with older retro consoles, fan-made products based on consoles from the 2000s have grown in popularity online. Playmats, in particular, are gaining popularity on social media, in part because fans can embrace more creative ideas that official makers might be less inclined to try. A company called Rug-A-Fella has taken playmats to the next level by creating mats based on beloved Nintendo DS game cartridges like Animal Crossing: Wild World and Mario Kart DS.
Rug-A-Fella has gained tens of thousands of followers on TikTok and Instagram by showing off its prolific production of gaming-themed rugs. DS cartridges are only part of its catalog as it also produces mats based on PS2, GameCube and Xbox games. Nintendo themed mats are especially popular with some such as the pokemon yellow and Kirby Air Ride rugs currently out of stock on its website.
Nintendo has rarely passed up an opportunity to embrace nostalgia, especially for the 8-bit and 16-bit era. However, as more and more consoles over time were considered “retro”, Nintendo did little to capitalize on the nostalgia that exists for relatively younger consoles like the DS. An easy way to lean into that nostalgia would be to bring back franchises that only have games on the DS, but Nintendo could go a step further by creating and licensing more merchandise based on systems like the DS, Wii, the GameCube and the Game Boy Advance. People who played these consoles when they were younger are probably at the age where they feel a lot of nostalgia for them, and Nintendo could do a lot more to please those fans.
Source: Rug-A-Fella
