Mario Kart 8 Pre-Orders Come With $10 Gas Coupon At Best Buy

Well here's one way to get the masses to pre-order. When DLC and useless key-chains fail, how about you throw in a free coupon for $10 worth of gas?

Nintendo News picked up a cool new story about the pre-order bonuses that Nintendo is working on with participating retailers for the upcoming Wii U exclusive, Mario Kart 8, following the recent announcement of the Mario Kart 8 Wii U bundles.

So here's how it works: You walk into Best Buy and pre-order a copy of Mario Kart 8. You get a receipt with a coupon code for $10 off gas when it's time to pick the game up at launch come May 30th. You take that coupon code and head to Revupyourkart.com to redeem the coupon code from the receipt. If you pre-ordered the game online from Best Buy's online store, you can redeem the code from the e-mail you receive.

You only have until the end of June to redeem the $10 code, of course.

As one observant gamer pointed out...

That's the price you pay for living in parts of America that local politicians have forgotten about.

Nevertheless, this is all part of Nintendo's renewed efforts to help put the Wii U back into the spotlight as a prime-time player in the eighth generation marathon. Efforts like this will go a long way for two reasons: First, gamers love to pre-order stuff and get bonus items for their pre-orders, so it appeals to gamers who like getting things in combination with their main purchase. Second, any parent who knows the value of $10 worth of gas will easily see this as a two-fold beneficial purchase, as they're getting a game for their kid and some free gas to boot. In today's economy, that's an indispensable bit of value right there.

It's also a very interesting bit of promotional material when you think about it, because it's not often video games are attached to pre-order bonuses that affect our real-world, everyday priorities. It will be fascinating to see how well this works out for both Nintendo and Best Buy with this little offer.

If things work out, maybe Microsoft can offer a similar deal. I mean, their sales of the Xbox One are failing pretty bad. Maybe $5 off security blankets that you can place over the Kinect will help, or maybe $10 off play-and-charge kits – since they aren't included in the box kit – will help turn the tide? Oh, or better yet, a $100 off coupon for when Comcast decides to open up their financial rectum-ravager for everyone unlucky enough to be stuck with their monopolistic tendencies following the FCC's lifted-levy on internet neutrality will turn things around for them. A discount on TV on your TV? It can't hurt.

Anyway, Nintendo is prepping for excellence come May 30th. Are you ready?