Nintendo’s latest mixed-reality video game, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, recently went on sale in the US, and gameplay videos are starting to swamp Thwomp the net. And while the inventive iteration of the game looks like fun, pet involvement adds a new, hilarious dimension. Just check out some of these videos for evidence of that fact, as they’re full of cats and dogs making for cruel, yet oh-so-cute racing impediments.
As the videos show, Mario Kart Live consists of a video game—for the Nintendo Switch—as well as physical RC cars. Players set up tracks via racing gates in their homes, and, using augmented reality tech, guide their real karts with in-game character karts. (Each $99 game comes with one RC car, but multiplayer is possible with more Switches and cars.)
Using their Nintendo Switches as controllers, players race through custom courses they’ve set up in their homes. And, as one would expect, the courses are approximately ten million times better when pets inject themselves into the action. In the video at top, for example, the YouTube channel, Blue Television Games, shows a race in which a cat forms a perma-block with its paw.
Esports Tournament Director and Twitter user “Bear” posted another great Kart cat video, above. The video shows Bear racing around his home track before his cat Ginger slips underneath his bed to block his RC car. Unlike the cat in the first video, there’s no paw blockage, but the interaction is just as funny. Mainly because the cat apparently perceives the RC car as a rabid, whining rodent.
Dogs, of course, jump in on the live Kart action too. Bear posted another video of one of his home tracks featuring two dogs, and even though they’re uninterested in the RC cars, they’re still hazardous. Mostly because the relatively brontosaurus-sized canines can’t be bothered to get out of the way.
Nintendo
Along with Bear’s video featuring dogs, YouTube user Stephen Farrelly also posted one (immediately above) involving a rambunctious pug. Throughout the video, the pug is up in RC Mario’s grill, spinning and slamming like a nasally blue shell. Speaking of which, we can only imagine what kinds of interference pet birds could drop onto one of these races. Hopefully it wouldn’t be a real-life version of a Blooper though: that could get messy.
Feature image: Blue Television Games