Mario Kart World introduced many new features to a series that has been around for a long time. One of those new features was wall riding, and now Nintendo has released a line of toy karts that can do the same thing in real life.
The Mario Kart World Wall Run Collection
The range was officially revealed by Nintendo this morning and is available to buy at Nintendo stores across Japan. The collection features six core characters – Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Daisy, and Yoshi – but it’s not who’s included that has grabbed fans’ attention; it’s the unique thing these toy karts can do.
What, no Cow? Come on, Nintendo.
Each kart comes packaged in a can with artwork of the Mario Kart World map wrapped around the outside. When you wind up the kart by dragging it back a few times, as you would with a regular toy car to make it speed away, you can place it on the side of the can it comes in and it will wall ride it round and round, an homage to the wall ride skill you can do in the latest Mario Kart game that’s easy to do but hard to master.
I have no idea what kind of sorcery makes these karts capable of wall riding in real life. They can’t just wall ride along anything, though, unfortunately. Whatever the tech is that makes these toys work, it’s incorporated into the cans they arrive in, as they can only wall ride while attached to the can. Although if magnets are involved, maybe they’ll be able to whizz up the side of your refrigerator too.
The Canned Karts Are Blind Boxes
Aside from them only being available in Japan for now – hopefully they’re eventually released elsewhere – the only catch is that you can’t choose which character you get. The karts are $14 each and are blind boxes, which means you won’t know which of the six Mushroom Kingdom residents is inside until you crack it open.
You can guarantee you get the character you want by purchasing a set of six. The full set costs $84, and in that instance you will presumably be guaranteed one of each. That’s unless it’s a similar situation to the Final Fantasy 7 acrylic figures where buying a set in this way didn’t guarantee you wouldn’t get duplicates.
Nintendo has kind of acknowledged that the Mario Kart series may have peaked with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and that anything that came after it was always going to feel like a letdown to some. That’s why it continues to support both games. 8 Deluxe recently received an update that added a chaotic eight-player split-screen mode, while World’s latest update introduced ten new tracks to the game pulled from the original Mario Kart on SNES.