February 4, 2023

You’ve probably seen – and maybe you want to unsee – the GIF of Mario kissing Sonic. Amid all the laughs generated by the meme, the blade that gave rise to the GIF has just been auctioned on Twitter for the value of U$$ 4,000.

Authored by the artist and developer Pedro Menos, the piece was sold by the content creator and youtuber Kwite for something around R$18,000 – considering currency conversion and applied fees – following bidding starts at R$50.

The GIF, which was widely circulated on social networks and ended up achieving worldwide fame, wrote another chapter in the history of the internet and was responsible for mixed feelings among its viewers, generating laughter, but also that feeling of “is it possible to unsee?”. After all, they are two classic characters, from different universes, involved in a totally sexual energy.

Conceived in 2016 by Pedro Menos during his participation in an animation workshop poor (“poor” in French) in Porto Alegre, not even the artist himself believed that the blade would be sold for such a high price. After all, he knew the GIF had gone viral, but he didn’t expect demand to be so high.

“I participated in a pauvre animation workshop, taught by Amanda Gatti at Casa Peirô, a cultural space in Porto Alegre, at the invitation of an ex-girlfriend”, said Pedro. Mario with Sonic” […] “I didn’t even intend to get such a high price for the GIF. I thought it would sell for, I don’t know, around R$500”, commented Pedro in an interview with the Adrenaline website.

Known to be an animation style that applies precarious techniques to perform the work, the poor fits very well with the type of art that Pedro likes to create – both for his comics and for the games he develops.

Deliberately marginal, the artist’s works seek transgression. As is the case of the famous GIF, which despite having been created without pretension, achieves the same result, since it generates conflicts on the part of the viewer when seeing the classic characters kissing.

For those who haven’t seen the GIF yet, it can be easily found on the internet, including in reaction videos from the famous youtuber Pewdiepie – who ended up not giving credit to Pedro. Check out:

But Pedro’s story didn’t start with the GIF. The artist is an anarchist and his games, comics and illustrations are made not only to generate income, but also to propagate the ideal that video games belong to everyone.

Among the developer titles are “Azar”, “Police of Astonishment”, “Telethugs” e “Night of the Patriots”. In them, national rap personalities and soundtracks are represented and various situations that occur in our country are referenced.

In addition, Menos still has the project “silver pirate”, an independent – ​​often mobile – arcade that contains their games. With it, the artist seeks to show that anyone can make games and even build their own machine to play.

“I want to transform video games into a street culture, like hip hop, that is in the arcade, to be on the street. Focus on the manual, on the artisanal, so that we can decentralize and take away this ownership of games from large producers.” declared Peter.

If you want to know more regarding Pedro Menos and his content, you can access his campaign on Apoia-se, buy his games on Itch.io and follow his texts regarding games on his blog “Menos Playstation”.