Mario Kart: The Arcade Game

An interesting story has emerged this week from the Japanese AOU Arcade Show, where it has been announced that Nintendo is collaborating with Namco once again – this time for the tentatively-titled Mario Kart Arcade Grand Prix.

Only a few details were made available at the show – the game will make use of the Double Dash engine and Nintendos Tri-Force arcade board; there will be 24 courses, set over six diverse worlds; there will be new playable characters, such as Namco’s PacMan; and most gigglesome, the game will employ a system known as “NamCam” (do you see what they did there?) which by using a camera above the display monitor will put the players image in the game. The machine will also make use of re-writeable save cards, as is particularly common in arcades today.

This announcement has only covered Japan so far, with no details of a European release being detailed. Whilst the title is certainly not as niche as a number of other arcade games that never see the light of day over here, we certainly aren’t holding our breath in anticipation of a Western release. It would be nice to see, mind you.

If anything transpires, we’ll let you know right here.