The game starts up and feels like Mario Kart. Mario Kart Live is kind of like those, but the extra Nintendo layer of polish here is excellent. There have been racing drones that you could watch video footage on your phone with and robotic RC cars with phone-connected gaming controls. My dining room, after setting up gates along with cones and cups for fun. The lighting conditions in my office and dining room ranged from well-lit to a bit dark, but the game seemed to track the gates and race just fine. Then I tried the dining room downstairs, which required a lot more decluttering. I set up the gates in my home office first, which forced me to clear off most of my floor. You could keep driving back and forth and through the gates again before hitting the next gate, extending the track in complex loops. In the game, I see my track marked out from paint on my wheels.

These gates are the four checkpoints for race courses and once they're put down I make my race course out by driving through each gate. The kart can drive under them and the kart's camera not only recognizes the gates but adds videogame graphics on top of them on your Switch screen. The fold-out cardboard gates are a lot bigger than I was thinking they'd be: roughly two feet long, so they'll fill up a room fast if you drop all four down. A button above that turns it on and syncs with the Switch.Ī free game app on the Nintendo eShop syncs with the kart via QR code and it auto-connects after that whenever it's turned back on. A slide-open side USB-C port is where it charges up. It's a cute little car and has a big camera mounted above where Mario or Luigi sits.

The box has a single Mario Kart RC car, with either Mario or Luigi. Setting it up: One kart, lots of cardboard gates Put Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit in that bucket, but also draw a special little circle around it if you've ever fantasized about putting Mario Kart in your living room.įour cardboard gates come in the package, and they're big. A way to shrink yourself down and race around your own home? Absolutely. The kart, developed by New York-based Velan Studios, is like a combination of some robotic drone toy, blended with a video game. Nintendo had those scannable Amiibo figures, too, which are piled somewhere in a corner of my house. Lego Super Mario turns Lego bricks into a board game. Ring Fit Adventure is a physical living-room workout. Nintendo Labo was cardboard-folding performance art. Nintendo has been down this weird blending of game and real life many times before. Mario Kart Live, in a weird way, is very much that virtual things-in-the-real-world overlap I've been seeing happen on phones and headsets, but in a Mario racing toy. Suddenly I remembered playing an art-project version of Super Mario while wearing a Microsoft HoloLens years ago.

Mario kart wii save game editor