Serious racing gamers don't use handheld controllers. An entire industry serves the hardcore racing sim player, with steering wheels, pedal controls, even giant room-filling rigs that use a real racing seat for the true racing experience.

But they all pale in comparison to this group of hobby hackers—they turned a real-life car into a controller for Mario Kart 64.

YouTuber Gordon Hlavenka, who posted this video, explains that his son Dan and friends Adam Ringwood and JP Smith used his Chevy Volt as the basis for this melding of classic video games and modern vehicles. The trio, known as Team Catch Me If You CAN (get it?), calls it "the most realistic car driving simulator ever," and won multiple prizes at HackIllinois 2016, a University of Illinois competition for hackers and backyard engineers.

Obviously, the finished product took a ton of work, but basically it boils down to this: The team hooked up a Raspberry Pi mini-computer to the car's OBD2 port, allowing a laptop to read the CAN BUS signals coming from the car's steering, throttle and brake sensors. With the laptop plugged into the car and running Mario Kart 64, the car becomes a controller—including the headlight switch and wiper switch, which control Mario Kart's speed boost and weapons throwing. Any recently-built car with sensors on all the vehicle controls will do: The team used a Honda CR-V to develop the kit, and demonstrate it here on a Chevy Volt.

"We only bricked the car twice, and it seems to be recoverable," the team notes on their website documenting the full engineering project. It's well worth a read if you love computer projects, or just the idea of using your car to play video games.

Check out how it works below. Some folks may shy away from the computers that control today's modern cars, but to others, all those motherboards spell opportunity.

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via Digg

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