Close X
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
ADVT 
Interesting

How to turn your home into a Mario Kart racetrack

Darpan News Desk The Canadian Press, 02 Oct, 2020 11:17 PM
  • How to turn your home into a Mario Kart racetrack

The popular Mario Kart series of games has seen the stars of the Nintendo universe race through deserts, haunted houses, ancient temples and myriad other exotic locales.

Next stop? Your living room, provided you have the space to host your own track.

"Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit" is a toy and video game combination that uses a "mixed reality" interactive experience to let gamers set up racetracks in their homes and drive them using their Nintendo Switch consoles.

The kit, which will be released Oct. 16, uses a Switch-controlled Mario Kart toy mounted with a camera to drive through checkpoints and create a track. Players can then drive that course, either in a single-player time trial, against AI opponents or in local multiplayer mode with up to three additional drivers.

The product includes the physical kart, featuring either Mario or his brother Luigi, four gates and a USB charging cable. The four gates serve as the checkpoints for racetrack creation and must all be used when creating a course.

The combination of using in-game tools with real-world objects offers a lot of creative potential when designing tracks. The gates can be customized with a variety of boons and traps familiar to Mario Kart enthusiasts, including items, speed boosts and Thwomps — massive stone blocks that smash down on the track. Courses can be assigned environments which have their own hazards, such as ice blocks that can freeze your cart.

Those digital enhancements can be combined with physical elements to make courses even more challenging. A demonstration video showed a cart plowing through a stack of cardboard boxes on the track, creating a series of hazards for other racers. Creative gamers will no doubt find no shortage of clever uses for everyday household items when making tracks.

If it all comes together, the result should be a classic Mario Kart racing experience boosted by creative input from gamers. So far it looks promising, as the demo showed Mario whipping around a custom course, using items to boost his speed and throw obstacles at opponents and avoiding traps in both the physical and digital realms.

Of course, like a physical toy racetrack, you'll need some room to set up. At a product demonstration a Nintendo spokesperson recommended an unobstructed space of roughly five square metres to lay out a track, which could be a challenge for those who live in apartments or condos, or in busy environments with a lot of foot traffic.

There are options if space is at a premium. Gates can be used several times per lap, and tracks can cross over each other to add complexity to a compact design. Compact tracks would need some pretty tight turns, so the toy kart would likely have to run at one of the lower available speed settings.

There is also the issue of price, especially with multiplayer races. The manufacture-suggested retail price of the kit is $129.99 — about $50 more than the average price of a newly released triple-A video game — and each player must have their own kart and their own Switch to participate. The software component of the product is free to download.

Also, as a physical kart is needed to play, there is no online connectivity. So in the product's current state, it's not possible to create a track then share it over the Internet with a friend.

While space and price are potential issues, "Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit" should deliver an intriguing experience to fans of the series. It remains to be seen how seamlessly the physical and digital products coexist, but the potential is there to satisfy kart racers and track builders alike.

MORE Interesting ARTICLES

Pakistani Boy Arrested On Charges Of Sexually Assaulting Hen

Pakistani Boy Arrested On Charges Of Sexually Assaulting Hen
In a bizarre case, a 14-year-old boy has been arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a hen in Pakistan's Punjab province of Pakistan, a media report said today. 

Pakistani Boy Arrested On Charges Of Sexually Assaulting Hen

Chinese Robot Qualifies As 'Doctor', Beats Humans In National-Level Test

Chinese Robot Qualifies As 'Doctor', Beats Humans In National-Level Test
The robot, co-developed by leading Chinese tech firm iFlytek and Tsinghua University, has achieved a score of 456, higher than the national pass mark of 360,

Chinese Robot Qualifies As 'Doctor', Beats Humans In National-Level Test

It Tastes Nutty: Why This Startup Wants Humans To Eat Fruit Fly Larvae

It Tastes Nutty: Why This Startup Wants Humans To Eat Fruit Fly Larvae
Fruit flies have a lifespan of only six days but multiply up to 15 times in that time, making them easy and cheap to farm and harvest. There is virtually no waste created in the process, as all parts of the larvae are used. 

It Tastes Nutty: Why This Startup Wants Humans To Eat Fruit Fly Larvae

Chinese Man Proposes His Girlfriend With 25 Brand New iPhone Xs

Chinese Man Proposes His Girlfriend With 25 Brand New iPhone Xs
Chen Ming, a young video-game designer from Shenzen, China, recently sparked the envy of iPhone fans all around the world, after buying 25 brand new iPhone X smartphones and arranging them in a heart shape to propose to his girlfriend.

Chinese Man Proposes His Girlfriend With 25 Brand New iPhone Xs

FIR Lodged Against Maria Sharapova For Endorsing Gurgaon Housing Project

FIR Lodged Against Maria Sharapova For Endorsing Gurgaon Housing Project
A Delhi court has ordered an FIR against tennis player Maria Sharapova after a luxury housing project buyer in Gurgaon filed a complaint that the project publicised in the name of tennis star Sharapova never took off.

FIR Lodged Against Maria Sharapova For Endorsing Gurgaon Housing Project

Cockatoos Chewing Up Australia's Broadband Network

Cockatoos Chewing Up Australia's Broadband Network
Australia's government-built $36 billion broadband network, already under attack from underwhelmed customers, has found a new and formidable enemy - cockatoos are chewing through cables across the country.

Cockatoos Chewing Up Australia's Broadband Network