Magiilaro

There is no pre SNES Mario Kart era, the first Mario Kart was for the SNES…

It is possible to run code directly inside PDF files, as can be seen with Doom or Linux running inside a PDF file https://github.com/ading2210/linuxpdf

In addition to that can PDF files prepared to trigger security weaknesses and exploits in PDF readers (often Acrobat Reader), to act as an attack vector and run malicious code.

So no, PDF are not safe by design.