A few behind-the-scenes clips show colorful karts jumping off ramps to grab serious air.
If you haven’t seen the advertisement for the new Mario Kart 7 for the Nintendo 3DS that’s playing in the U.S., you are missing out on some fantastical go-kart action. It’s a 30 second romp putting real people into the fanciful go-karts usually occupied by the likes of Luigi, Bowseer and Princess Peach. At first glance, one might assume all the karts were computer-rendered graphics, but watching two clips from the effects house Drivers Inc. vimeo account shows that all the karts were actually built and filmed in real life.
Here is the ad in question:
And here are the behind-the-scenes videos from Drivers Inc. While it’s very cool to see how they used a crane to suspend the kart in the air to capture the effect of hanging in the air, these short clips are such a tease. I would love to see more of that huge Bowser kart tooling around.
In fact, where are these custom karts now? I bet Nintendo would make bank auctioning these off for Child’s Play or other charity. So many of my contemporaries grew up lusting over Power Wheels and riding go-carts, who wouldn’t want a real-life Mario Kart?
Source: Youtube and Vimeo via GameSetWatch