Quick Look: Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit

Nice choice of BGM.

This actually looks super neat. Not something I'm rushing out to buy, but really cool.

I would love to see more videos/streams of this thing. Just make some more tracks.

I'd also wager, what might be most effective would be to put the Switch dock in the middle of the course, and run the HDMI cord further as needed to the capture device.

What an absolutely weird bit of kit. It'll probably sell based on novelty, but doesn't look like much actual fun.

wow i was not expecting this

Very generous...

Edit- If Jason's son saw this, lol. There will be expectations.

I feel like my cat would enjoy this more than me.

Flagging this for visible Jan feets.

When I was a kid in the 90's I had a Hornet RC kit car that was way better than this. It was so fast and I put extra fat tyres and bouncy suspension on it so it would go off road and you could jump it about three feet in the air. Eventually I totaled it against a kerb and my dad was super pissed. Anyway. Get your kid something like that or if you are mr moneybags, a nice drone. This mario thing looks like it is for babies.

If you are a fully grown adult and want one of these for yourselves ... well I am not going to shame you. I might have just looked up kit cars on amazon.

I don't know about the US Nintendo site but Japan's site includes a link to a PDF to print out spare checkpoints and arrows.

The game looks more fun than I expected.

In 11 years of visiting this site, this Quick Look is one of the coolest I've seen. Largely because of Jan setting up that second real course.

Good stuff, Jan!

"there's my capture station"

JAN YOURE NUDE

"Indoor use only" seems like a real missed opportunity, although I understand the technical difficulties outdoor tracks would create for something like this in its early stages.

@ak1mbo said:

Labo will remember this.

Re-volt is a gem of a game.

Will be interesting to see if the poor connectivity is a widespread issue, because that kind of kills the fun of actually playing the course.

Geez, 120 euro's is quite a price though!

Great video!

This is what I was looking for today.

This looks cool but the connection stuff is worrying. Hopefully it was just the battery level, but the whole "you need space, but not too much, then you'll have other issues" seems rough.

Also, love the attempted dig at 1:45 towards Apple, even though this also only comes with a cable and no wall adapter.

My home isn't suitable for this, but I'm one of like 5 people who still goes into an office sized for 100+ people and I'm tempted to get this for use there. Ultimately though, without people to play with, I doubt it would hold my interest for more than 2 hours.

Thanks for sharing, Jan.

TBH this implementation looks incredibly bad. Such a rare huge miss for Nintendo.

I will say, in my experience I had a much more reliable video feed than Jan was getting in this quick look, but it would start to break down when I drove the kart into another room (never lost connection entirely, though). I believe Nintendo has said it uses a direct Wi-FI connection to the Switch, rather than going through a router. It works pretty well to play in handheld mode and follow it around.

The biggest struggle was setting up the courses in such a way that the auto-steer (and by extension, bullet bills) could complete them without crashing into things or taking corners short. From what I can tell, the camera is only really tracking the gates and arrow signs (combined with data from the accelerometer and stuff), so strategically placing them is important. It obviously won't try to dodge any physical obstacles you place in the course. When you get a course set up that actually works properly, though, it's pretty magical just watching the little kart wind its way through on its own.

Also, mirror mode, which you unlock pretty quickly, is a fun, trippy thing.

As the owner of a tiny apartment I'm not the audience for this, but I went into this Quick Look with absolutely zero expectations and thought this was extremely neat. Great job Jan and thanks for putting this all together for us!

Post-COVID when the gang is able to get back together in an office space, some multiplayer vids of this could be lots of fun.

Every time the camera feed skips or pauses it makes me feel super queasy. The way the rendered AR elements drift around the physical space probably doesn't help either.

That said, having the ground level perspective where everything seems huge is really cool.

This is probably one of the coolest things i've seen in a very long time. I had a cheesy grin the entire time. I fucking love nintendo. Please never change!

Buy Jan some real scissors.

Shout out to the asian squat at the end! Represent

I soooo want to play this, but my single-wide trailer is no place for a race track. :(

This was rad, thanks Jan and Jason!

If you don't think this looks like fun then I can only conclude you have murdered your own inner child.

@zombieclem Yeah I got a bit nauseous watching this as well.

This is one of those things that looks absolutely incredible, I'm so glad exists, and will NEVER touch with my own hands.
I hope Nintendo NEVER stop making weird shit like this.

I don't think there's a reason why this car wouldn't work outside. I think that disclaimer is just there as a legal liability thing: if the wheels break by driving over some grass, gravel or mud, or the signs get damaged by the wind or rain, you can't complain about it. Similar to how the course-creation stops if the cars wheels leave the ground: no complaining if the car breaks from a fall. Nothing stops someone from creating a path then, after the course is set in the game, putting a jump in (or just having a ramp to the side and using it as shortcut like Jan did). All these things are just to limit the people who can claim a short lifespan to those who used it on flat indoor surfaces (i.e. the least likely to break it).

I'm just looking forward to the eventual youtube video where they buy 100 of these and set up a huge race in a warehouse.

Man, I'm impressed. I didn't expect much to be honest, but wow. Very cool. And the technology behind this is very neat. High cost and practicality aside, this seems awesome.

Nice work Jan, covering this game from home! This game seems cool but I wonder how long it would be fun to play.

On the one hand, this looks super neat, and this would be so fun to play.

On the other hand, watching this video made me super motion sick, and I was not able to finish watching it. Now, this could be caused by not having direct control of the vehicle whose perspective I'm watching - but I'm not going to spend about $100 to find out.

holy shit where was this when i was a kid.

i'm buying a switch.

also, dang jan, you have a nice place!

Holy shit this is so cool I am blown away I expected it to kind of suck

Shoutout to Jan for the impeccable editing

I think Griffin deserves a Mario kart after all the co-hosting he did this year.

Fantastic overall explanation and demo of the system Jan! I really enjoyed this. I think I might pick one up for my nephew as a Christmas present.

This is so cool. How did I not hear about this til now? I want to experience the underside of my couch the way my cats do. Also my cats are going to be terrified of this and/or become OP environmental hazards.

I had no interest until I saw this in action. Just the car moving around your space was cool as heck. It makes me simultaneously want a Mario Kart Maker game, a new Army Men game, and a drone.

Just a box

This toy highlights how awful the switches built in wi fi chip is

What a neat toy. If I had something like this as a child I would have adored it.

Definitely not the target audience for this anymore, but it really makes me want to play Mario Kart

Too bad the connection seems poor. What a bummer.

Awesome video Jan!

This is really cool

I'm fascinated by how fast it looks on the camera vs how slow it's actually moving when you see it from above. I get that it's an optical illusion but it works way better than I thought it would.

Well done with the video on this one!