Following its announcement back in September, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit recently sped into homes across the land, and no doubt many of you have been crafting intricate circuits around your home, pulling off daring manoeuvres between chair legs, leaving tyre tracks through the kitchen and speeding away from the claws of curious pets while enjoying this mixed-reality take on the world's premier kart racing series.
Co-developed by Nintendo and US-based Velan Studios, prior to release we had the chance to question key members of the Mario Kart Live team about the project, its history and the challenges that came with mixing Mario Kart with reality?
Nintendo Life: Can you tell us how you came to work with Nintendo on this.
Karthik (Velan): The team at Velan began development of the first prototype (hardware and software) in mid-2017.
Tamori (Nintendo): The Mario Kart series is one of Nintendo’s key franchises and one that can be easily enjoyed by anyone.
Whenever there’s been a new hardware or network feature, we’ve always thought about how these could be used in Mario Kart, and how they could help make communication fun.
We felt there was a strong affinity between Mario Kart and Velan Studios’ new idea of fusing a real-life kart with game footage!
Through experiments and iteration, both Velan and Nintendo teams worked through these challenges.
It's been an honor to work on a Mario game – especially as the debut title from Velan Studios.
How closely did Nintendo and Velan Studios work together on the development of Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit.
Tamori (Nintendo): To speak about our roles in the development in extremely broad terms, Velan Studios handled the invention of the concept and the game software development, while Nintendo handled the development of the hardware, system software, and an IP review of the game as part of the Mario Kart franchise to ensure it meets the quality standards for a Nintendo product.
We couldn’t have developed the game with just one side making the decisions, because the software, system software and hardware all influence each other.
We couldn’t have developed the game with just one side making the decisions, because the software, system software and hardware all influence each other!
Velan developed the original reference hardware design and specifications and worked closely with the Nintendo hardware team who were responsible for the final design.
Velan worked on the game design and content, while collaborating and getting feedback from the Nintendo software and IP teams to make it look and feel like Mario Kart.
Ichijo (Nintendo): Game software like this – meaning ones that take on new technical challenges – tends to be a bit tricky for people without any technical knowledge.
To ensure the game can be easily enjoyed both by adults and children alike, we included a number of ideas that are typical of Nintendo games, such as Lakitu providing tutorials or explanations in the game.
The Mixed Reality experience is central to the core game experience of Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit.
What aspect of Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit are you most proud of.
Ikuta (Nintendo): It would have to be that we solved the issue of trying to achieve several things as once, working with both hardware and system software.
In addition to implementing the features necessary to achieve this new experience of linking a real-life kart with a game – the idea proposed by Velan – we wanted a wide range of users to be able to play in a wide variety of home environments in countries all over the world, and also wanted to design the physical kart so that it still felt like something from Mario Kart?
To ensure players can enjoy Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit on a variety of different flooring, we implemented several ideas to cope with situations like that, such as making improvements to the hardware of the kart to increase torque, and taking data from the kart to work with the game and adjust the kart’s output.
Both Velan and Nintendo developers worked as one team on this project.
Where do you see the Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit concept evolving from this point onwards.
While this year marks the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros., the Mario Kart series is another of Nintendo’s key franchises that has been enjoyed by many over the years.
I believe that in Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, it’s easy to see Nintendo’s philosophy of developing new, unique integrated hardware-software entertainment.
Our thanks to Yosuke Tamori, Yuji Ichijo and Hiroki Ikuta from Nintendo and Karthik Bala from Velan Studios.
If you're looking for our verdict, check out our Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit review!
Rumours that he turned down a role in The Hobbit to work on Nintendo Life are, to the best of our knowledge, completely and utterly unfounded.
I would really want nintendo to make other characters for this home circuit!
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