What Mario Kart fan hasn’t secretly dreamed of playing a real-life version of the Mario Bros-themed racing game? But while most people would be content with renting regular go-karts and using their imaginations really, really hard, two Texas engineers, Hunter Smith and Ben James, decided to make the dream a reality by creating an ingenious live-action version of the Mario Bros-themed racing game.
Where things really get amazing, however, are the RFID-embedded power-up item boxes suspended over the track by pieces of rope, which allow the player to collect items like bananas and turtle shells modeled on the original Mario Kart game — and actually affect their performance in the race. The mushroom item, for example, wirelessly activates tiny Servo motors that enable go-karts to speed up by accessing 100 percent of their throttle power.
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