Mario Kart Arcade GP – the new reality of kart racing

Bandai Namco has been showing off a VR version of their Mario Kart Arcade GP games and it’s even better than you’d think.

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They say VR is hard to promote, because unless you’re actually doing it yourself it’s hard tell what all the fuss is about. Well, not with Mario Kart Arcade GP VR it’s not.

The game uses Valve’s HTC Vive headset, and although you have a real steering wheel to use you can activate items with one of the controllers just by raising your hand.

The Arcade GP games aren’t by Nintendo and so there’s often slight differences to the usual formula. In this case that includes items hanging from balloons, instead of being in blocks, and a new hammer weapon.




The game will be available to the public for the first time in Japan this Friday, but hopefully it’ll come to the West later (Namco Funscape in London should be shoe-in at least).

None of the previous Arcade GP games have ever been turned into home games, and the obvious problem here is that the Switch doesn’t have a VR headset and is not compatible with Vive.

Despite appearing more sceptical in the past Nintendo has shown increased interest in VR in recent years. But the Nintendo Switch console is nowhere near powerful enough to run any type of VR so we wouldn’t expect a home version any time soon.

If Nintendo do plan a headset for the next console though you’d have to assume an experience like this will be top of their to do list.

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