Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit overview trailer gives you a look at modes, creating courses, and more

A new Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit overview trailer gives you an in-depth look at how you set up courses, items you can use during a race, and what modes and races will be available.

In this new augmented reality twist on the classic Mario Kart set up, you race with real AR toy karts that you control and race with your Switch to blend the real and virtual worlds together. This essentially means you can transform your home into your very own Mario Kart track, and the new trailer details just how it works.

In order to set up the game, you use four numbered cardboard gates that you can place around a room. You then drive through the gates in numerical order and the path you take becomes the course. From your standard loops to tracks full of twists and turns, you can create any kind of course you want.

Nintendo recommends that you have a space that's at least 3.5m x 3m / 10 x 12ft to play in. The scenery in your home then becomes the course, which you can see virtually on the Switch as you race, as well as in reality as the AR toy zooms around your homemade track.

As well as detailing the ins and outs of setting up your course, it also gives an overview of the controls, and gives you a look at some of the items, races, and modes you can expect to see. Grand Prix is the main mode of the game, where you'll be facing up against the Koopalings across eight Grand Prix that feature 24 different courses in total.

Many classic items such as Mushrooms, Bullet Bills, Bloopers, and the dreaded Red Shells are included, and the AR toy will react according to what you use in the game. So if you use a Mushroom, your AR toy will also boost along the track, and if you get hit by something in the virtual game, the kart in the real world will stop.

First announced as part of Mario's 35th anniversary celebrations, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is set to release on October 16. A Mario set and Luigi set will be available to give you one of the two AR karts available. Each set comes complete with the character kart, course set up, game, and a USB charging cable.

Keep track of the newest releases on the horizons with our list of upcoming Switch games.

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Heather Wald is the Evergreen Editor, Games at GamesRadar+. Her writing career began on a student-led magazine at Bath Spa University, where she earned a BA (Hons) in English literature. Heather landed her first role writing about tech and games for Stuff Magazine shortly after graduating with an MA in magazine journalism at Cardiff University. Now with almost seven years of experience working with GamesRadar+ on the features team, Heather helps to develop, maintain, and expand the evergreen features that exist on the site for games, as well as spearhead the Indie Spotlight series. You'll also see her contribute op-eds, interview-led features, and more. In her spare time, you'll likely find Heather tucking into RPGs and indie games, reading romance novels, and drinking lots of tea.