Idea for a real life Mario Kart

"edu-petrolhead" (edu-petrolhead)
08/14/2014 at 09:18 • Filed to: discussion

Guys, I've got the best idea. I discovered how to create a racing series similiar to Mario Kart in real life! Due to the chaotic nature of Mario Kart races, this real life race need to be raced with karts, due to their maneauverability and low speeds. To explain better my idea, I separated it in topics:

- Items: Paint sections (or project box holograms, in the future) in the track, so each time a driver passes this section, a computer system randomly chooses an item based on the position of the driver, and assigns it to the kart's memory. The racer can, then, press a button in the wheel to release the item. The feasible items are mushrooms, shells and banana peels. The mushrooms are explained in the boosts section below. The shells and the banana peels would be invisible to unaided eye, but would appear on the drivers' HUD and in TV transmissions, added by computer. When a kart passes over a banana peel it could lose some horsepower for a few seconds, same thing as if it is hit by a shell. Green shells would follow a straight trajectory, like a laser, and if they intercept a kart, same thing. Red shells would make the kart in front of the user lose a few horsepower, because the red shells are like homing missiles;

- HUD: The easiest part. The HUD could show a map, the current equiped item, the position and traps on the track, like banana peels, which would be invisible to unaided eye, but visible to the TV spectator. In the HUD the drivers (and spectators) could see the banana peels, item boxes and sheels;

- Boosts : There are three types of boosts in Mario Kart: Turbo start, mushrooms and boost pads. From these three, the later two are feasible in the same way as the Indycars push-to-pass system. The track could have painted sections with a radio transmitter, or RFID, or NFC and each time a kart passed over this section, the system could give the kart a short power upgrade, in the same way as the push-to-passes. Mushrooms would work in a very similar way, only they would be stored in the kart's memory and activated by the item button in the steering wheel;

- Fairness: Mario Kart relies a lot in the luck, so to be fair, each weekend could have 4 races on the same track, and the final ranking be set as a sum of the points of each driver.

Best idea or bestest idea ever? :)

Edit: As ethanseal pointed me, this was already !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! Now I'm sad, I could be super-duper-rich with this idea.

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DISCUSSION (5)

Mr. FiSTer of Team FiST Fetish > edu-petrolhead
08/14/2014 at 09:24

Not quite the same but still awesome.

http://jalopnik.com/i-played-real-…

EL_ULY > edu-petrolhead
08/14/2014 at 09:26

lol it is possible! That is a super high tech approach. I organized something similar but very low tech.

Some dudes here at work and I took a bunch of go-karts to a parking lot a couple years ago. We tied balloons to them and had some air soft guns to pop them. In theory it was going to work out. We had the cone track set for 3 laps. Loose you balloons and your out.

....didn't work out too well. We just crashed and shot each other instead lol.

edu-petrolhead > Mr. FiSTer of Team FiST Fetish
08/14/2014 at 09:26

Haha, this is one of that cases when different unrelated scientists discover the same thing independentely. This idea is really similar to mine...

Mr. FiSTer of Team FiST Fetish > edu-petrolhead
08/14/2014 at 09:29

'Tis, I think if there was a more dedicated team this could be made to be frickin awesome.

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > edu-petrolhead
08/14/2014 at 09:36

your plans seem a bit more clean cut than the SXSW plan that ethanseal shared with you.

I like it. Please convince the guy who bought the old Packard Plant in Detroit to make this a reality when he makes a kart track there!