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College Students Open a Portal into the World of Mario Kart

Don't tell your mom (or mine) I said this, but playing video games is great. Playing them together with your friends makes them even better, and well before broadband Internet connections became mainstream, we had split-screen action to help us compare our skills.
Real-life Mario Kart 1 photo
Photo: Screenshot from YouTube
Driving games are fun, but since we're not talking about some serious simulations that can actually reflect how good we are in real life at turning the wheel, they can become pretty boring after a while. Make the driving largely irrelevant, add some power-ups, and make the players focus on hampering the efforts of others rather than just finishing first, and you've got yourself a recipe for success.

That's a recipe a group of four college students wanted to replicate in real life, and looking at what they've accomplished, their system seems pretty bulletproof. Alex Zenk, Katie Johnson, Floyd Bundrant, and Jacob Gover are all undergrad engineering students at the Colorado State University, and they've filmed a short presentation of their project that sadly lacks the turtles mentioned before, but apart from that, makes for a very faithful reproduction of the game. Extra points for wearing Mario costumes.

The team had to scale things down a little, so it only went for four different power-ups: a shield, a speed boost, an EMP blast, and the dreaded Death Beam. The power-ups are picked just like in the game by driving on top of some pieces of cardboard laid on the track. This randomly awards the driver one of the four powers - there's an LCD screen on the steering to inform them which one, as well as the sound effects that come out of a speaker.

The first two - the speed boost and the shield - do exactly what you would expect them to, with the first lifting the limitation off the throttle and the latter allowing the driver to resist an attack. Speaking of offensive power-ups, the EMP blast simply cuts out the acceleration for a certain period of time, letting the kart drift, while the Death Beam does that as well, but also activates the brakes.

In a potential scenario where four or more karts are on the same track, having the one in front of you brake all of a sudden on a straight might be a little dangerous. On the other hand, do note that one of the four responsible for this project is on crutches, so that might just explain it.

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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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