What could be better than Mario Kart on your smartphone? Well, how about Mario and the Minions teaming up for a movie? Yes, Mario and Minions fans, you heard right: Nintendo is building a phone-based version of the iconic driving game, called Mario Kart Tour. Not many details were revealed, but Nintendo said the game is in development now with a launch hopefully in March of 2019.

More good news from Mario land: CBS News says Nintendo has also hooked up with Illumination Entertainment, who are most famous for the Despicable Me movies and the inventive if somewhat banana-obsessed Minions, and it looks like Mario and the Minions are going to partner for their own movie, set to hit theaters…. eventually. There is no release date for the movie yet, but we’ll keep you in the loop.

Faster, cheaper, and… faster

One of the greatest automobile rivalries on the planet is between American carmakers Ford and Chevy, and it’s definitely game on between the two these days. Just a few days ago, Ford’s halo supercar, the exotic GT, became the first car ever to lap Virginia International Raceway in under 2 minutes and 40 seconds. But now, Chevy’s King Kong Corvette, the new ZR-1, has gone and topped Ford’s record.

They say that if you want to go faster, just add money, but the VIR lap times are doing just the opposite: The $900,000 Porsche 918 did the lap in 2:43 flat, then the $450,000 Ford GT lowered that to 2:38.6, and now the new 2019 Corvette ZR1 has shaved off another second from that record with a time of 2:37.3! How much for the new top-of -the-line Corvette? A paltry $123,000. Check out the story and ride along on the record-setting lap.

Is the future flexible?

As we’ve noted before, Samsung is looking to shake up the cell phone business with a novel new form factor: the foldable smartphone. Now, Business Insider is saying the new phone, commonly rumored to be called the Galaxy X, is likely to debut this year. With the new Galaxy S9 set to debut in the coming months, the window is open for Samsung to bring the X-phone to market this fall as a holiday must-have.

No specs have been released – it’s a super-secret project as you might imagine – but Samsung has been showing off flexible display tech and prototypes for years now at CES and other events. A foldable smartphone could be the next big thing, or an outlier, depending on how Samsung pulls it off. A flexible phone would have to do a LOT of flexing over its lifetime, making durability a top issue, and then there’s making it thin, tough and user-friendly. But if Samsung can make it work, it could change up how we use smartphones.

We’ve got more news on our Facebook page and YouTube channel, and be sure to tune in to this week’s DT podcasts: Trends with Benefits (general tech shenanigans) on Thursdays, and Between the Streams (movie and TV topics) every Friday.

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