Sunday, 10 March, is MAR10 Day. You know the one. Mario Mario (yes, that is his name), the Brooklyn-based plumber who can’t seem to land a date. It’s not his birthday or anything — that’ll be 11 October — but it is Mario Day. MAR10. You get it. And South Africa is joining in on the fun this weekend.

The fun involved includes a decent store-wide sale on Switch consoles, games, and accessories — both online and in-store (check out what we thought of that) — and a competition that’ll see someone pick up a Switch bundle worth R10,000. So… a Switch and there might just be enough left over for a game or two. We’d recommend Super Mario Bros. Wonder or Odyssey, but we doubt Nintendo will let you do the picking.

There’s a fire! (sale)

The sale isn’t particularly special aside from a couple of standout items. The obvious leaders are the two Switch consoles on sale — the Switch OLED Mario Red Edition (for obvious reasons) or a plain ol’ Switch with a physical copy of Wonder for R8,000. That’s important. Seriously. Give it fifteen years, and it’ll pick up a couple of grand on eBay, easily.

The game that’s been slashed down the most is WarioWare: Get it Together! selling for R500 — R600 off the initial retail price. We’re not sure why you might want a Mario-branded SD card for the Switch, but we won’t stop you. Nintendo’s cut the price from R1,400 for a 256GB card to R700. Something similar fetches a lower price on Takealot, but we’re not telling you how to spend your money.

There are around five pages of sales explore, which you can do here.

O MAR10? Wherefore art thou, Mario?

As for the people who aren’t so interested in actually paying Nintendo, the company is running a competition that’ll win one lucky person a Switch hamper worth over R10,000. All you need to do is head to Nintendo’s official store in Sandton and… find Mario. Simple enough.

Find the fella (pictured above) sometime between 10:00 and 16:00 on Saturday or Sunday (9-10 March), snap a picture with him, and post it to social media using the tag #MAR10Day_SA and tag @NintendoSADistributor and @SandtonCityMall in the same post. Make your way back to the official store — use the Switch on display, play a round of Mario Kart (using Mario), and have a store representative mark off your lap and enter you into the competition.