I love Mariokart.
Though my skills have declined precipitously over the past decade, I still have love for the game. I am such a fan and aficionado that I knew all of the tracks the Mariokart ride paid homage to throughout this Augmented Reality experience. Yep, that’s right. The new Mario ride is AR. You wear an AR mask and this is the only interface on which you can see Team Mario and Team Bowser. You are racing against Team Bowser, and the construction of the game is such that four people ride in a Kart and each, with their own steering wheel, are only interacting with the AR while the Kart does its thing on the track.
Your goal is to score 100 plus points. Presently the record is close to 250. I scored 132 and 122 respectively, because I shot way too many shells at the same target. So, what happens is you see the enemy team on your goggles as well as Ghosts, and other characters you’re supposed to shoot and you shoot them. Also, you are directed to turn the wheel at certain times for additional points. However, the turns don’t translate to actual Kart movement.
It felt like a miss. It felt like a near miss. It felt like you could have built a game around racing and, at least, divided the people in the room into Team Bowser and Team Mario and been competitive. You could’ve even made it so the racers played against each other. They tried that with the point system. They show the points for each Kart and the point winner for each Kart, and the overall points person for the match. This is all good… but not great. Given the standard 150 minute wait time, it needed to be great.
Some Thoughts:
- I’m actually getting old. Like really old. I’m pushing 48.