Battling for the lead at an IRL version of Mario Kart

When it comes to mainstream gaming appeal, it’s hard to beat Mario Kart. Break out some controllers at a party and you’ll likely get a grid full of eager racers. The game’s seamless way of balancing disparate levels of skill and aggression creates an addictive experience for just about everyone.

Real-world karting, on the other hand, remains more of a niche affair. Sure, plenty of people race karts at theme parks and putt-putt parking lots, but this style of racing isn’t on the radar for your average group of friends looking for a Friday diversion.

What if you could do Mario Kart IRL without risking life and limb at some questionably safe theme park in China? That’s basically the question that RPM Raceway is answering with the launch of Kart Klash. Debuting today at three of RPM Raceway’s tracks in the northeast (Stamford, CT; Long Island, NY; and Syracuse, NY), RPM has developed a way to bring a taste of Nintendo into reality. It’s only a taste, and it has room for improvement, but after getting an early go behind the wheel, I’m itching for more.

Kart Klash is a new experience at RPM’s existing indoor tracks running electric Sodikart RSX2 karts. These machines offer variable levels of performance but can hit a maximum speed of 45 mph, which I can assure you feels pretty quick when your posterior is two inches from the floor.

They’re light-years more advanced than the smoky, lawnmower-engined rigs that you’ve probably experienced at some roadside tourist trap.

As someone who’s raced two-stroke performance karts in the past, I’m always skeptical at venues like this, but RPM’s karts did not disappoint. While not as fast as my old racer, in full-power mode, the Sodikart is plenty quick enough to make the tight, twisting, two-level track at RPM a real challenge in a straight race.

But things got way more fun when adding in rockets, land mines, and EMP bursts. After two races to learn the track, it was time to enable Kart Klash. While the team at RPM loaded up the prerelease software and rebooted the course, I was given a run-through of how to play.

While a typical race is based on lap time — which is to say that you can finish last on the track but still win with the quickest lap — in Kart Klash, whoever crosses the finish line first after eight laps wins.

Racers grid up for a standing start, but starting up front isn’t necessarily an advantage. As in Mario Kart, the farther from the lead you are, the better the power-ups you receive. What kinds of power-ups? Well, they might sound a little... familiar.

Is the arsenal in Kart Klash fresh and original? Absolutely not. It’s basically a one-to-one copy of the weapons you can find in Mario Kart, suitably changed to (hopefully) avoid any copyright concerns. But, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

To collect these power-ups, you drive over a spot beamed onto the race track by an overhead laser projector. The result is little more than a spinning icon on the track, far from the dramatic floating 3D object shown in RPM’s promo videos. Still, you do at least get a notice on the LCD display on your kart’s steering wheel telling you which power-up you received, and then you can mash the right button on the steering wheel to fire.

When you’re hit with a weapon, your kart slows down dramatically for a few seconds, just long enough to be intensely frustrating. You also get a little notice on the LCD display, telling you not only what weapon hit you, but who shot it.

That makes your eventual revenge all the sweeter.

What’s missing is visual cues for the weapons. You won’t actually see rockets firing ahead of you or TNT dropping behind, but the track uses a system of positional speakers sprinkled around, so you will hear the rocket roaring its way to the next target. Meanwhile, those watching the action trackside have an animated view that overlays the weapons on the track.

So the mechanics are all very familiar, but what I quickly learned after getting behind the wheel is that the video game experience doesn’t really translate to the real world. That’s primarily because this track isn’t anything like those in Mario Kart. RPM’s circuit may be twisty and lit with technicolor LEDs, but it’s no Rainbow Road.

For one thing, a single lap takes around 30 seconds, which is far shorter than your average Mario Kart track. It’s also significantly narrower, which dramatically changes the equation of most of the power-ups.

For example, if you get hit with a shell in Mario Kart, it’s very difficult to maintain your position. In Kart Klash, blocking is all too easy. If you get hit, you can just move to the middle of the track. You really need to time your shots perfectly to make a clean pass.

The other big change from Mario Kart is just how manic Kart Klash is. You can collect three or four power-ups per lap, which means one every 10 seconds or so. And, since your next power-up overrides your last one, you’re heavily incentivized to just mash that fire button.

Those who save the most desirable power-ups in Mario Kart for the perfect moment, then, will be a little disappointed with the spray-and-pray nature of Kart Klash.

Despite those significant changes, Kart Klash still captures the core fun of the Mario Kart experience. It’s nowhere near as finely honed or perfectly balanced as Nintendo’s iconic race, but Andrew Farage, CEO of RPM Raceway, told me that his team will be eagerly listening to player feedback and adjusting details like weapon spawn rates and power-up positioning.

To provide that feedback, though, you’ll need to go out and try it for yourself. I went in as a skeptic, thinking there was no way the joyous, accessible fun of Mario Kart could possibly be replicated in real life. And to some degree that’s true. At its best, Kart Klash doesn’t quite achieve the same humorous heights as the game, if only because you can’t look your opponent in the face when your perfectly timed shell strikes true, but the added thrill of driving for real makes this far more exciting.

And it had better be, as it’s a lot more expensive. The game launches today at $30 per race for RPM members and $40 for nonmembers. That’s about $10 more than a regular kart race, a premium well worth spending with the right crowd.

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