Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit puts a real radio-controlled kart on your floor and a video game on your screen. Nintendo published it in 2020 for the Nintendo Switch, and Velan Studios developed it. You drive the toy with the familiar Mario Kart controls, and the onboard camera streams what the kart sees back to the Switch or the TV. The living room becomes the track.
Trailer, via Nintendo of America.
Four Gates and Five Laps
Setup is the selling point, and it holds up. Players build racing playsets around the house, then lay guidance arrows along four gates to mark checkpoints. Those checkpoints carry you through a five-lap race. The karts are equipped with video cameras and run under the Switch’s control. The track keeps the traditional Mario Kart items, so the racing logic is the one you already know.
The world does the rest of the work. Your home turns into ocean depths, a sandy desert and more from the world of Mario Kart, all seen from the kart’s own camera. The game runs in first person or third person, and it supports up to four players, human or AI. Single player and multiplayer are both here.
Bowser Jr. and the Koopalings
The Grand Prix mode has you race against Bowser Jr. and the Koopalings. Winning unlocks new customization options and costumes for the playable characters, which gives the mode a reason to exist beyond a single afternoon.
Turn your home into a race track with Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, a brand new way to experience Mario Kart on Nintendo Switch!
That line is the pitch, and for once the pitch is accurate. The camera view is not a gimmick bolted onto a standard racer. It is the racer. Take the toy away and there is no game left.
What the Numbers Say
Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit received favorable reviews and sold 1.73 million units worldwide as of December 31, 2022. The published critical score sits at 8.1/10, drawn from an IGDB critic aggregate of six outlets.
That is a good result for a game that asks players to clear floor space before they can play at all. The sales figure is the honest measure here. This is not Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and it was never meant to be. It is a smaller, stranger thing that costs you a room and pays you back in a camera angle no other Mario Kart can offer.
The caveats are real. Four gates and five laps is a thin frame, and the Grand Prix structure of racing Bowser Jr. and the Koopalings will not hold a player for months. The unlocks help. They do not transform it.
What matters is that Nintendo and Velan Studios shipped the idea at all, and shipped it working. Mixed reality usually arrives as a demo. This arrived as a game you can play against three other people.
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