Special edition, Mario-themed red Wii goes to UK

The most colorful Wii console yet in its 4-year history is heading to the UK and inciting encouragement that it will be heading to the US as well.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Nintendo’s penultimate character Mario, the company designed a special edition red-colored Wii, as well as a red Wii Remote, to package in a bundle with the New Super Mario Bros Wii game. It will be coming out in Japan and, now, the UK.

One of the distinctive factors about the Wii hardware has been its solidarity. Unlike the PS3 and Xbox 360, which have gone through numerous changes, hardware redesigns, and capacity increases, for years there was only one Wii SKU on the market. That changed when a black version of the console launched several months ago, and now Nintendo is customizing the system even more.

The red Wii bundle will also include Donkey Kong pre-installed on the system. Donkey Kong was the first game to feature the character we all know today as Mario. At the time he was internally known as Jumpman but that name didn’t actually appear in standard gameplay.

So far the new bundle has not been confirmed for the US, but it would seem odd for Nintendo to totally not acknowledge the milestone anniversary in Nintendo’s top revenue-earning country.