A Mario Kart race around the living-room sofa

Round a sofa leg, pass the dining table, and another corner appears. In Nintendo's Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, furniture becomes part of a real course. A small kart runs across the living-room floor, while its onboard camera sends a view of the room to the Nintendo Switch screen. The race is not confined to vehicles on a display.

Released in Korea on December 17, 2020, the product combines a camera-equipped kart with four gates. Players place the gates on the floor to define the route, connect the kart to the Switch, and create a course. Deciding where the race will go is already part of play. Moving the gates creates a new route through the same room.

Virtual opponents and items appear over the camera's view. From that low position, chair legs look like large columns. Steering around what appears on-screen also changes the physical kart's direction. The handheld display and the object at the player's feet show the same race at different scales.

Events in the game affect the real kart's speed. A boost makes it accelerate, and being hit by an item can bring it to a stop. The connection goes beyond adding graphics to a real-world view. Players watch virtual competition on-screen while seeing the kart's starts and stops in the room itself.

Not every floor makes a suitable course. Nintendo recommends a level indoor area of at least about 3.5 by 3 meters and keeping the kart within roughly five meters of the console. Deep-pile carpet or hair on the floor can interfere with its wheels. Clearing space and preparing the route happen outside the screen.

Changing the course involves more than moving lines in an editor. A gate must be picked up and placed elsewhere, and the kart's path checked again. The same sofa can sit inside one corner and outside the next. A distance crossed in a few human steps becomes a stretch of track for the kart to negotiate. The room stays the same size, but the route through it changes.