Mario Kart Live!

Mario Kart Live!
Developer(s)	Nintendo EAD CCs Studios
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Genre(s)	Racing
Series	Mario Kart
Release Date(s)	2018
Mode(s)	Single Player, Multiplayer, Online Play
Age Rating(s)

Mario Kart Live! is a game for the Mario Kart series. It will be the ninth edition to the main series, and the twelfth overall. This will be the third Mario Kart game to be co-developed by another company, CCs Studios, with Nintendo EAD after Mario Kart 7 and Mario Kart 8, and the fourth overall to be developed by another company. Much like most Nintendo 3DS and Wii U games, this game is available for purchase both physically at retail and digitally through download from the Nintendo eShop.

The game borrows a majority of the features and mechanics from Mario Kart 8, including the return of tricks, gliding, underwater driving, kart customization, bikes, and ATVs. Sub categories for karts, bikes, and ATVs are introduced including the sportscar, sportsbike, and the buggy, respectively, each having differences that set them apart from their parent category. The main new features for the kart include transforming into a hovercraft to race on the surface of water and as a drilling mechanic that takes drivers beneath the ground as well as making it easier to break through heavy and large obstacles. Another main feature is how team racing is integrated and expanded on in the game in which players can join one out of six teams in a series of special races to score points for their team. Mario Kart TV returns with more features including cutting parts of various different highlight reels and editing them together to create a custom trailer intended to showcase the best of the player, including their skills, best hits and action, as well as their favorite characters if desired.

Teams

Teams have been greatly expanded upon for Mario Kart Live!. Instead of just two teams, usually just a red team and blue team, there are now six teams players can join in for various modes including VS. as usual and the new Team Grand Prix mode where players join a team and race against the other teams in a series of randomly chosen courses with each race under special conditions. In the game's online modes, players can join one of the six teams and collect VR points for one of the team's overall VR points worldwide. However, players cannot leave a team once they have joined one until the beginning of the next week. Players who joined the team with the most VR points worldwide at the end of the week get a bonus of 500 VR points. All of the teams' VR points are reset back to 0 at the beginning of next week.

The following are the six teams with their respective leader and color.

• Mario Super Motor Team:
  • Leader: Mario
  • Color: Red
• Luigi Gusters:
  • Leader: Luigi
  • Color: Green
• Princess Peach:
  • Leader: Princess Peach
  • Color: Pink
• Yoshi Runners:
  • Leader: Yoshi
  • Color: Light Blue
• Lord Bowser:
  • Leader: Bowser
  • Color: Orange
• Toad Mushroom Powered:
  • Leader: Toad
  • Color: Blue

Teams do not have permanent members, except for their leaders, meaning that any other character can join any team. If a player picks a leader for a team and joins a different team, a slight recolor will be made for that leader's original team. In any single player team mode with CPUs, all six leaders will always appear in the race.

Characters

Like most other Mario Kart games, characters are separated into three weight classs: light, normal, and heavy. However much like in Mario Kart 7 and Mario Kart 8, there are several hidden sub categories in each weight classes making some characters in the same weight classes slightly different from others.

Only 18 characters are confirmed for Mario Kart Live!, all of which are confirmed to be the entire default roster.

Default
Mario Medium	Luigi Medium	Princess Peach Medium	Yoshi Medium	Bowser Heavy	Toad Light
Koopa Troopa Light	Donkey Kong Heavy	Wario Heavy	Princess Daisy Medium	Birdo Medium	Diddy Kong Medium
Bowser Jr. Medium	Waluigi Medium	Toadette Light	Shy Guy Medium	Rosalina Medium	Lakitu Light

Trivia

• All six teams were originally from Mario Kart 8, in which they made several promotional appearances in courses such as Mario Kart Stadium, GBA Mario Circuit, and GCN Yoshi Circuit.
  • Mario Super Motor Team and Lord Bowser were used as Mario Kart 8's red and blue teams, respectively.
  • All six teams' leaders consist of all six characters that appeared in all iterations of Mario Kart, including the arcade games.
• Retro courses use updated sound effects from their respective games such as the countdown at the start, the item roulette, and the lap/section count.