New Jump Rope Challenge Costumes Include a Long Lost Nintendo Mascot

Necessity is the mother of invention, and a necessity for hearty indoor exercise is what gave us Jump Rope Challenge from Nintendo. The free-to-download Switch game has even proven popular enough for Nintendo to release 12 character-based costumes for its cute bunny avatar—including a costume for a character most of us thought we'd never see again.

Nintendo announced the (free) update to Jump Rope Challenge yesterday evening on its official Twitter account. The twelve costumes are Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Bowser, Wario, Link, Samus, Isabelle, Inkling Girl, Inkling Boy, and a truly special guest: The Badge Arcade bunny.

Badge Arcade for the Nintendo 3DS is an app that lets you decorate your main menu by way of badges (read: icons) you fish from a "UFO catcher" crane game. As with real-world UFO catchers, you pay for chances to grab enticing badges. The racket is pitched to you via Badge Arcade's pink bunny mascot, who has a serious talent for getting you to cough up more dosh. (It's hard to deny his cuteness.) Nintendo had a knack for making "sales mascots" in the mid-'10s; Rusty, the dog who sells you games in the "free-to-play" 3DS game Rusty's Real Deal Baseball, also comes to mind.

Badge Arcade is still available to download, but it's no longer being updated. Poor Badge Arcade bunny has faded into near obscurity, but social media is happy to see him cameo as a costume for Jump Rope Challenge.

Other updates to Jump Rope Challenge include new backgrounds, and "the ability to double-under." Apparently, that involves jumping high enough to let the jump rope pass under your feet twice. I had to look that up because I haven't jumped rope since I was 10 and refuse to start again until I re-learn the words to Miss Mary Mack (the version with the bad words, of course.)