Nintendo's new remote-control toy brings real Mario Kart races home

Game action on Switch steers cars round obstacle courses you create in your living room

Mario Kart has been a family favourite since the early 1990s thanks to its potent combination of cute characters, speedy but simple racing and an array of red shells, banana skins and other eye-wateringly unfair tools of playful sabotage. Nintendo's latest experiment in the toy world, made in collaboration with Velan Studios, is an actual Mario remote-controlled kart that comes with a game. Instead of confining all the action to a screen, this lets you race a little car around your living room, using a Nintendo Switch to control it.

Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is a mixed-reality" game, meaning that what you see on the Switch screen is an enhanced version of what's actually going on in your living room. In reality, the car is zipping around on the floor, weaving between table legs and under cardboard arches. On the screen are all the things you'd expect from Mario Kart: power-ups, sandstorms that blow the kart around and make it harder to control, and other characters to race against.