Step into a MINI Concept Aceman car, and you're immediately immersed in sensory heaven. Lights blitz across the dashboard and the doors. Dynamic, colored shapes emerge on the screen, which you can touch and move and customize with your fingertips. This is the concept of the new MINI Aceman, which was revealed to the public in late August at Gamescom 2022. For the debut, MINI teamed up with Pokémon, arguably one of the most iconic and successful franchises in fandom culture in the world, spanning film and games and products.
Pokémon's most recognizable and lovable characters is none other than Pikachu, who greets the driver in the dashboard's circular, center console in a dedicated "Pokémon Mode," made in collaboration between MINI x Pokémon. As if charging for a lightning attack, Pikachu's bolts shoot out and reverberate, dazzling across the surfboard-shaped dashboard, inner doors, and throughout the cabin, which is fully equipped with cutting-edge OLED display and touchscreen technology. In another animation, a Poké Ball appears on the center console, and a blue glow moves outward. MINI chose the iconic Pikachu to represent the concept car because it is, of course, all-electric.
It's a design meant to bring out a sense of fun, discovery, and innovation. In the spirit of playfulness, one of the MINI Aceman's most exciting features is the ability to connect your game console to the car, which can project an integrated beamer screen onto any wall in front of the car in your very own built-in mobile cinema. There's even a rooftop rack where, on a late-summer night, you can sit on and play games with friends while parked, or even just watching the latest Pokémon flick or series, drive-in movie style.
At Gamescom, the idea was brought to reality in giant, life-size toy packaging, engulfing an adult viewer as if they were the size of a kid. The toy packaging included a live-sized Pokémon branded MINI Aceman as well as playful instructions, stickers, and shout-outs to special features on the back, such as the detachable boombox, an extra set of rims, and a step-by-step guide on how to use the OLED display and integrated beamer.
As we know it, gaming will be to the 21st century what movies were to the 20th, or novels to the 19th. Join the MINI Concept Aceman on the road to the future.
