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Mario Kart Live Home Circuit toys let you build a physical track & play it on Switch in October

A new set of toys will let you build physical tracks and run solo, co-op, or versus AI races of those tracks on the Nintendo Switch with Mario Kart Live Home Circuit.

TJ Denzer

September 3, 2020 8:35 AM

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Nintendo has always been one for innovation in how people can play with its beloved franchises and during the Super Mario Bros 35th Anniversary presentation, they did not disappoint in this regard. Mario Kart Live Home Circuit was announced: a new set of racing toys in which you can build a track and then run races with the physical toys through a connected app on the Nintendo Switch.

Nintendo announced Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit - in partnership with designers Velan Studios - among a ton of other reveals during the Super Mario Bros 35th Anniversary Nintendo Direct on September 3, 2020. Coming on October 16, 2020, the Mario Kart Live Home Circuit toy sets will come in two variations (a Mario set or a Luigi set) that comes with a racer and their kart, four gates to make checkpoints, arrow sign boards, and a USB charging cable, as well as connectivity to an app on the Nintendo Switch, which will be required to use the toys. You can check out how Mario Kart Live Home Circuit will let you create your courses and play them in the trailer below.

Mario Kart Live Home Circuit is the latest in a number of innovative toys featuring Nintendo franchises, and it's in good hands with the designers at Velan Studios, headed up by Karthik and Guha Bala who previously founded Vicarious Visions. We’ve seen Nintendo LABO offer creative building fun and activity, and LEGO Mario and classic NES sets allowed us to create fun Mario experiences out of LEGO bricks. With Mario Kart Live Home Circuit, one of the Nintendo’s most popular angles on Mario games takes on new life, complete with competitive racing through the product’s mixed reality (MR) experience. Mario and Luigi sets are a good start, but we hope to see even more karts and racers come to the lineup to make Mario Kart Live Home Circuit even more fun. A Bowser or Peach set would be a blast. Fortunately, Nintendo is as happy with the Mario Kart Live Home Circuit design as we are.

“Our mission at Velan is to create breakthrough games that are magic,” said Velan Studios CEO Karthik Bala. “We invented the initial mixed reality hardware and game prototype to really nail the exhilaration of racing in the real world with the play and feel of a video game. We showed the experience to Nintendo and were thrilled they saw its potential. That started a wonderful multi-year creative collaboration, which became Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit. We can’t wait to see the creative ways fans play when they race around their own creations as Mario and Luigi.”

There’s likely more details (such as pre-order opportunities) to come as we get closer to launch date in October, so stay tuned to Shacknews for fresh information and updates on Mario Kart Live Home Circuit, and don’t forget to check out other major reveals from the Super Mario Bros 35th Anniversary presentation.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.