Yoshi, Mario, Bowser, and the Crew Are Back with Mario Kart Live Home Circuit

If you’ve been paying attention to the title and header, then you’ve understood what we’re going to be talking about here. Yes folks, Mario Kart is back. And this time, on a whole new level. The game is slowly creeping into your living room once again. You’ll understand what we mean shortly.

First off, I would like to personally say, it’s about friggin time we see a new Mario Kart. But what I meant by earlier is that Nintendo has taken the game in a slightly different direction, to the level where you now have little race cars flying around your living room floor. What Nintendo has done is basically bring a bit of the game to life.

It all happens on a Nintendo Switch. When you buy the Home Circuit set, you’ll receive a toy car and four gates. Now the car isn’t just a simple motorized car. It includes a camera that transmits live track conditions to the Switch so that you can see where you’re driving. The car also reacts to the obstacles encountered in the game. This means that if you hit or are hit by an obstacle in the game and are stopped, the toy car will also stop in reality.

Part two of the story are the numbered gates. Once you’ve set-up the gates through the living room, you have to drive through them in numerical order, and a software will map the route the car took and simply configure a shape based on that route. There are some basic shapes that Nintendo helps you configure, but in all reality, you can basically make whatever course shape you’d like. One of the nice things about this sort of set-up is that you can literally include obstacles already existent in your home as part of the course.

Imagine for a second that you buy one of these and set it up. You can have a track that goes behind your TV, or underneath the couch if there’s enough space. All the while seeing this perspective on your handheld screen.

As for the actual gameplay, a lot of the classic perks and traps are still available, but a few new ideas have also been included. The classic red shell and banana is still available to be used on adversaries, and so it the lightning strike.

Now let’s not forget that it is a racing game after all, so you’ll definitely be doing lots of that. The classic VS mode is still available and even the Grand Prix mode. If you do remember, however, that during gameplay you had to pick the speed at which you’ll be playing, from 50cc to 200cc, that is still included.

What makes this feature even better with the Home Circuit is that this also affects the actual cars speed. So 50cc will look like a cat just strolling through the house, while the 200cc setting runs make the car around like a cat after a laser pointer.

But there is a downside to this game. It's technically only one player. Sure you can do the VS mode with your friends, but they have to bring their own Switch and Mario or Luigi racer. This was one of the beauties of those days 20 years ago, only one person needed a console, the other the game, and someone else with controllers, and we would forget to even eat food. Ahh, the good ol’ days. They just might be back.