Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit Turns Your Living Room Into A Racetrack

Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit was announced during Nintendo's surprise Mario 35th Anniversary Direct, letting you transform your living room into your own custom Mario Kart track to race around with friends. Yes, even your pets can be involved in this.

Key to Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is the included remote-controlled kart, which features a camera mounted above the plumber's head to track your progress around your living room. The camera feed is transmitted back to your Switch, which then overlays elements like track limits, HUD elements, and more to give Home Circuit its distinct mixed-reality racing feel. Virtual racers are also visible alongside your kart.

From the trailer it, seems you will be able to lay out tracks however you want using up to four checkpoint banners that you place around the space you're playing in. The toy kart will need to drive through these checkpoints to register a lap, but it does seem like the game will also communicate the twists and turns between them while you're playing so that you can't just take the shortest path to the finish line.

Races will include various visual themes and traditional Mario Kart items, too, with developer Velan Studios explaining that the controls have been designed to be easy to grasp but faithful to the series' feel. You'll also be able to mix local and online multiplayer, with multiple karts on a single local course combining with virtual opponents on screen.

Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is out on October 16 for Nintendo Switch. It was one of many new Mario announcements from Nintendo's latest Direct, which included announcements for Super Mario All-Stars, Super Mario 3D All-Stars, a port of Super Mario 3D World with additional content, and more.