Nintendo's New Mario Kart Makes Your Living Room the Race Track (bloomberg.com) 27
Nintendo is about to release its biggest product for the holiday season, where it will be up against new-generation consoles from rivals Microsoft and Sony. An early look at the new Mario Kart game for the Switch, featuring augmented reality and your living room as the race track, indicates that Nintendo will be just as competitive. From a report: In Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, which becomes available from the Japanese gaming giant on Oct. 16, players use their Switch consoles to race and around their home. The action places animated objects in real-world surroundings, along the lines of Pokemon Go. Here's how it works: You, holding your Switch, play through what would look like a regular game of Mario Kart if not for your couch and dinner table in the background. You'll steer around a real toy kart on a track you've plotted out in your house. A camera attached to the kart feeds footage to your Switch screen, allowing you to take control of Mario or Luigi as they collect mushrooms and drive laps.
The game, previewed over a Zoom call with a Nintendo representative, looks fun and challenging, with a robust selection of options such as custom races and environments. Everything one might expect from a Mario Kart game is here, from the sound effects to the prominent presence of Lakitu, a friendly monster who sits on a cloud and referees the race, occasionally using a fishing rod to rescue you from danger. You can build elaborate racing tracks out of furniture and cardboard, limited only by the size of your room, which may be a drag for those in New York apartments.
The game, previewed over a Zoom call with a Nintendo representative, looks fun and challenging, with a robust selection of options such as custom races and environments. Everything one might expect from a Mario Kart game is here, from the sound effects to the prominent presence of Lakitu, a friendly monster who sits on a cloud and referees the race, occasionally using a fishing rod to rescue you from danger. You can build elaborate racing tracks out of furniture and cardboard, limited only by the size of your room, which may be a drag for those in New York apartments.
it's a-me (Score:3)
When your living room turns into rainbow road,
Mario's hit Peak Mushroom
Looks pretty fun (Score:2)
I wonder how it would react to my cats inevitably chasing it and knocking it around? :)
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Isn't that what the BB-Gun...err...spray bottle is for?
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Sure, but not for the cats! I think it would be hilarious if the game mechanics were able to take into consideration (and possibly advantage of) things like pets, toddlers, Nerf arrows etc.
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I wonder how it would react to my cats inevitably chasing it and knocking it around? :)
Are you putting AR goggles on your cats?
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Just a whole lot of catnip at this point =)
I'm too old... (Score:3)
So Ring knows everything about the outside of your house, from the make/model/year of your car to all of your neighbors, and now Nintendo knows everything about the inside of your house - make/model/year of all your appliances, your housecleaning habits, etc. All dolled up as a game for your children. How cute.
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They do? I mean sure Ring by necessity send video off to the borg, but what makes you think Nintendo designed a system whereby a live video stream is fed to them in real time to allow the Switch to get the video feed, add AR effects to it, take a controller input, and feed it back to the system all with critically lot latency required to play a fast game?
I think you are definitely getting to old. You're not thinking things through. Anyway here's a product to suit you: https://www.amazon.com/Initech... [amazon.com]
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They do? I mean sure Ring by necessity send video off to the borg, but what makes you think Nintendo designed a system whereby a live video stream is fed to them in real time to allow the Switch to get the video feed, add AR effects to it, take a controller input, and feed it back to the system all with critically lot latency required to play a fast game?
I think you are definitely getting to old. You're not thinking things through. Anyway here's a product to suit you: https://www.amazon.com/Initech... [amazon.com]
When the DMV is selling drivers' personal info [slashdot.org], what makes you think that Nintendo will not? They already force you (I think) to have an account for the Switch, and now there's a camera going around the house, tied to that acount. IMHO, at this point, it is naive to not expect them to do it.
Also, not that it's really important, but they don't need real-time feed. A few snapshots of the house every time you play are enough, and they can be uploaded at a later time.
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When the DMV is selling drivers' personal info [slashdot.org], what makes you think that Nintendo will not?
The fuck are you talking about. The GP postulated that Nintendo knows everything about the inside of your house, a technical impossibility. That's why they won't sell anything.
Seriously have you nutjobs not had your morning coffee yet? The aluminum foil tuned to the wrong frequency and the government satellites melting your brain or something.
Re: I'm too old... (Score:2)
So Ring knows everything about the outside of your house, from the make/model/year of your car to all of your neighbors, and now Nintendo knows everything about the inside of your house - make/model/year of all your appliances, your housecleaning habits, etc. All dolled up as a game for your children. How cute.
It's too late, they already got you from your smart tv, your Xbox/PlayStation camera, your phone, your laptop, the drone you got for Christmas last year, and a Furby you got when you were ten.
The only way to mitigate the damage going forward is to cover as much of the inside of your house as possible with reflective tape. Don't tell anyone though or they will send correcting codes to account for all the refraction, and you'll have to switch to duct tape. Trust me, I know.
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AFAIK nobody has inspected the network traffic from this thing because its not out yet. How you got one so early and how you analyzed the traffic would be a great blog post though.
I would have killed for this as a kid (Score:2)
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My little brother and I actually had this as kids. It was two cardboard boxes, tempera paint, and lots of imagination, but it was the greatest game.
Happy to see Nintendo rebooting this classic.
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*minutes
The battery in the RC car won't last for hours.
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I don't think so, it says each player needs a kart.
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Is there a Lakitu drone to rescue you from going off road?
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No, you race actual RC cars.
The cars talk to the Switch via WiFi. The karts contain a camera and the first time you set up the track, you have to have the kart pass through 4 gates with QR codes on them that are scanned by the switch.
Then everyone plays the track you laid out - of course, you can cheat but it's expected tha
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of course, you can cheat but it's expected that the social pressure of everyone else will call you out for cheating (it's an RC car traveling a virtual track).
Well, you can "cheat" in regular mario kart. Sometimes you can leave the track and shortcut across the grass. However the grass slows you down and in just about every case the "shortcut" is slower. From everything we've seen in the videos, it appears the speed of the car will react to things in the game, so I expect if you leave the virtual track, your car will go slower too. From there, it's up to how you lay it out. If you simply lay it out as a long stretch, then a turnaround, and then coming back right
We need this on the ISS (Score:2)
Meanwhile at Corridor Crew... (Score:2)
Amateurs ! [youtu.be]
thank you msmash.... (Score:2)
but I do strive for fairness and must send out a hearty high-five to msmash for this one; this is exactly the kind of cool stuff I hope
I don't look to tech and/or nerds for info on politics/health/social issues/etc. and yet a great deal of
So Many Track Ideas Already (Score:2)
Who wants this? (Score:2)
My livingroom is really super boring compared to the worst mario Kart track from the worse of the mario kart games. That's how bad my livingroom would make as a race track. Most tracks in all mario Kart games are actually pretty creative and fun to drive.
So I don't understand this unless it was something clever that got them out of real work but surely this won't be THAT popular, or is it just a small feature on top of the rest of the normal awesome that marior kart is?
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Okay, I read the article. Physical carts roaming around the house but being projected onto the television or I guess handheld. That kind of sounds cool but not in my house.
Especially an actual physical car roaming around. It will need to be charged and hope you don't have pets.
Might be a great idea for kids and I could see this as neat outside.
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