I’ve been a race car driver for as long as I can remember — in video games, of course. It’s been a good existence. Driving at over 150 MPH under a launching space shuttle (thanks, Asphalt 8) can be quite a thrill, but there has been something missing: the visceral feel of live action. That is, until recently, when I was competing on a conference table-sized flexible track with tiny, yet remarkably intelligent race cars that are all part of the upcoming Anki Overdrive.

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The name Anki may be familiar to some of you. It was the surprise guest at Apple’s 2013 World Wide Developer’s conference where it unveiled Anki Drive, a robotics-based race car game the combined an iOS App control system with a real track and electric toy race cars. The $200 final product, which arrived in stores that October, was pretty impressive. It featured an oval-pre-printed rack and two cars that could read the road, see each other and connected via Bluetooth to the Anki app.

AnkiOverdrive Cars Image: Mashable, Mark Andrew Boyer

With Anki Overdrive, though, Anki has gone more than a few steps further, creating what may be the best possible version of the classic slot-based, physical racing games. Each $150 started kit comes 10 pieces of straight and curved flexible track that snap together magnetically. There’s also some elevation pieces, a four-car charging base and a tire cleaner. During my time with the set, we must have done three or four different configurations. I only wish the slot systems of my childhood had been so easy.

As with the original set, Anki Overdrive includes two cars, though all the light-weight, palm-sized racers (additional ones cost $49 a piece) now benefit from the design chops of Harald Belker, the designer responsible for the look of the vehicles in Tron Legacy and Batman and Robin (you can’t blame him for the quality of those films). Anki’s cars include their own personalities and driving styles. Skull, for example, is a high-speed racer that features a canon. In Anki Overdrive, the “commander’ you choose in the app further modifies the driving style, whether you’re controlling the cars, or not. Anki representative told me that these new virtual race car drivers make it feel like you’re racing against a human instead of the computer (though, if it’s just you, you are racing against a computer).

One of the reasons Anki Overdrive works so well is that, to be honest, you are not entirely in control. Each race starts with all the cars, whether you have one or four on the track, slowly driving around the track while one of them ingests the infrared information embedded in each flexible track section. Once it has read the layout, it can share it with the other race cars. I love how, after consuming the layout, all the cars would automatically line up at the start line.

The countdown then begins within the app and the cars take off.

There are a number of different racing styles including a 15-lap race where you strive to be first and a King of the Hill mode. I probably enjoyed the straight racing style the most. Anki Overdrive cars will stay on the track on their own, but you can go fast enough to go flying off. Initially, I played in a level where, no matter how fast I went, I never left the track, but then the Anki reps enabled a burst mode, which I learned to use on straightaways (if I did it on curves, I flew off the track). During the race, I titled the iPhone (you can race against other iPhone or Android users or against the cars) from side-to-side to steer back and forth across the track. This was great for cutting off other drivers or even forcing them right off the track.

Anki Overdrive cars have personality and so do their virtual drivers (Commanders) who have particular driving styles, favorite track setups and their own ways of celebrating. Image: Anki

The more I played, the more competitive I became. Plus, more racing and more wins meant better performance and more weapons I could use through the game. I admit, it would be fun to endlessly race around a variety off track layouts, but the built-in extensibility — that similarity to a video race game — is one of the things that makes Anki Overdrive special. The other thing is all the ways the cars, which are basically computers, can interact with each other. During one of my races, I used one car's virtual grappling hook to shoot at another cars can slow it down. There's also a lot of sound to consume. The cars make a sort of clicking sound as they buzz around the track and the whole time I was racing, the iPhone app played accompanying sounds affects and added cheesy voice overs that, I assume, kids will appreciate.

Anki Overdrive's Controller is smart, simple and easy-to-use. Image: Anki

During my hands-on experience, we had four or five cars at our disposal, so we always had at least two cars to race. Anki Overdrive cars, including the two cars that ship with the starter set, Skull and Groundshock, can run for 25 minutes on a charge.

Anki Overdrive ships on September 20 and while Anki has no plans for micro-transactions, the manufacturers promise that the game will grow and change over time with downloadable updates. Plus you can always add more and more track pieces, like a four-way intersection “Collision Kit" and additional elevation rails. At one point we build a four-inch jump gap for the cars, which, when they had enough speed, most of the cars made without a problem.

As I watched the Anki team pack up Anki Overdrive, I had a little pang of nostalgia for my own old Marx racing set. Of course, that one took an hour to set up and the cars usually broke down in between every race. Anki Overdrive, on the other hand, is one of the best illustrations I've seen to date of what robotics and artificial intelligence can do for real world toys and video games.