Mario Kart Live Home Circuit: What We Just Learned About Nintendo’s AR Racing Game

Picking up your Change and racing on Mario Kart tracks with friends on a TV is one thing, but Nintendo will now let you race laps with an RC car at your home with Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit. The remote control car game connected to the Nintendo Switch, coming October 16, turns actual cardboard doors and their floor space into a Mario Kart game on Switch using augmented reality. After an initial teaser video earlier this summer, on Thursday we learned a lot more about what the game will do and how it works.

Sounds crazy? It seems crazy. However, this is not the first time that Nintendo has combined the real world with games. Nintendo Labo involved crazy interactive cardboard folding experiences (remember Labo?). Ring Fit Adventure turned the Switch into an exercise game. Lego Mario is a brick scan board game. The Nintendo Wii Vitality sensor was … well, we didn’t really talk about it. But Nintendo never mixed RC cars and video games before, although it once had an RC car video game, and Nintendo once made RC cars.

In a way, Mario Kart Live almost feels like a Mario Kart version of a Mario Maker game, as it is about creating your own courses. But it’s also a remote-controlled car racing game, adding a surprising amount of augmented reality to mixing video game effects on the Switch screen. It really does look like Mario Kart 8, but with your house as a backdrop. It reminds me of AR games on phones and tablets, supercharged with a racing car in motion. It reminded me of when I once played Super Mario on a HoloLens. And it also seems like a Nintendo evolution of phone-enhanced robotic RC cars, like the Anki Overdrive or Sphero’s Lightning McQueen.

Will Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit make a great Christmas gift for kids? We haven’t been able to test it yet, but we chatted remotely with Nintendo and watched a video demonstration of the racing action. This is what we learned.

It won’t connect. Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is local offline only.

The karts are paired with the Switch or Switch Lite directly via Wi-Fi, which means the game is offline. There are no ways to connect with friends online for challenges.

You get one kart per box and the software is free to download.

For $ 100 you get a kart (Mario or Luigi), a charging cable, four cardboard doors, and two arrow markers. The game software is free to download. But every player needs a kart to play, which means $ 100 more per player, which is … expensive. That’s $ 400 for a four-way race, even assuming everyone already has their own Switch (!).

You can play 1 to 4 players, but each player needs a kart … and their own Switch.

The game supports local races of up to four players on a real track, but again, each player needs a Mario or Luigi kart, as well as their own Switch to match. That’s a lot of additional hardware, which means that most people will just play a Kart on a Switch.

The kart is paired with the Switch by scanning an on-screen QR code with the kart’s camera.

Nintendo showed how karts are connected – an in-game QR code pairs the kart quickly, but the kart could be paired with another Switch later if necessary.

There are Grand Prix, Time Trial and Custom Race modes, and four different speeds (50cc, 100cc, 150cc and 200cc).

The main part of the game involves competing in a three-cup challenge with changing effects and enemies per race, or competing against a personal ghost in time trial laps. Custom Race mode allows for further adjustment of the rules.

Paint your own race tracks.

Mario Kart Live courses are custom-built. You will drive your kart and “paint” your route in your room in mixed reality driving the kart to make the road, using the four doors as control points.

The game only uses one setup course at a time and does not save course setups.

You have to repaint your track every time you start Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, and in Grand Prix cup events you will have to set up and paint another track to switch things up between races, or you will just compete the same design over and over again .

There are tons of mixed reality obstacles, power-ups, and ambient effects.

The game paints over your space, recording what the Kart’s camera sees in its fisheye lens, but looking up at the cardboard doors and arrow markers to animate additional features. There are obstacles in the game and power-ups appear on the doors (blocks, piranha plants, Magikoopa curses and more) depending on the course or how it is customized.

Extras unlock as you play, offering some replay options and creative challenges, but it’s not as deep a set of creative tools as Super Mario Maker. Still, it seems like each track has all sorts of pop-up additions, including underwater effects, fire effects, and items that can be used to launch other karts.

The physical kart slows down or changes course depending on the effects of the object.

When a red shell is thrown at a kart, it stops moving. A curse from Magic Koopa could suddenly cause reverse mirror driving. When the imaginary piranha plants grab the digital kart, they will make the real kart stop. Sometimes there will be excessive yaw, or maybe a Chain Chomp will drag the kart off course.

Nintendo recommends 10 by 12 feet of clearance for your typical track setup, and a maximum distance of 30 feet between your Switch and your kart.

That’s a lot of space, but track setups could (and probably should) get around household obstacles like chairs or tables. And Nintendo says that the Karts have a 30 foot range between the Switch and the Kart, but that it is better to be closer for better results on larger tracks, in case the Kart gets too far away.

The battery life is approximately 90 minutes, with a recharge time of 3-4 hours.

The karts will race for an hour and a half or so, which seems standard for RC cars and things like this. However, recharging time takes a while: the USB-C charger takes three to four hours to recharge. Expect enough breaks to play.

Nintendo does not recommend outdoor use or ramp jumping.

Nintendo says these go-karts are designed for indoor racing, with tires and a low-riding design that isn’t designed to go into your backyard (dirt and debris probably won’t be good for the Kart either). However, the carpets are apparently fine. And Nintendo has suggested that AR tracking for racing fields could be interrupted by things like the kart flying through the air, so ramp jumps won’t work and could even interrupt a race (AR effects pose a flat plane) Although I’m curious what would happen.

The game will work with Switch or Switch Lite, and in portable or dock mode. But you can’t play with just one Joy-Con.

It’s no wonder you can use Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit with any Switch. It’s also great that you can connect your Switch to the TV and play games in a living room so the whole family can watch you play or take turns. But the game needs both Joy-Cons (or the Pro Controller) to work and it won’t control with just one Joy-Con.

Next: we just have to try to play it.

We haven’t played the game in person yet, so we have no other comments on how it really feels and how good it is. Hopefully that will happen soon, because October 16 is not far off.