Velan Studios Partners With Nintendo for Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, a New Kind of Racing Experience on Nintendo Switch

Velan’s Debut Game Features Inventive Game Design and Technology that Delivers a Groundbreaking Mixed Reality Experience Blending Physical Karts and Digital Gameplay

TROY, N.Y.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Velan Studios has partnered with Nintendo to design and power a magical new Mario Kart experience, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, on the Nintendo Switch system. Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is a mixed reality (MR) game that combines a camera-enabled physical kart and course gate markers to turn any living space into the next great Mario Kart circuit. With Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, players design and construct courses in the real world, and race the circuit in a mixed reality experience that blends the digital game world with the real world in an immersive way on the Nintendo Switch system.

“We are thrilled to partner with Velan Studios for Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit,” said Tom Prata, Nintendo of America’s Executive Vice President of Strategic Initiatives. “Through this collaboration, we are providing fans with a one-of-a-kind, interactive experience that is only available on the Nintendo Switch family of systems.”

Velan Studios is building on the legacy of its founders Karthik and Guha Bala and their core team, renowned for their innovations in fusing toys with interactive game experiences.

“Our mission at Velan is to create breakthrough games that are magic,” said Karthik Bala, CEO, Velan Studios. “We invented the initial mixed reality hardware and game prototype to really nail the exhilaration of racing in the real world with the play and feel of a video game. We showed the experience to Nintendo and were thrilled they saw its potential. That started a wonderful multi-year creative collaboration, which became Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit. We can’t wait to see the creative ways fans play when they race around their own creations as Mario and Luigi.”

To learn more about Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, visit https://www.nintendo.com/. The game will be released by Nintendo worldwide on October 16, 2020.

About Velan:

Velan Studios was founded in 2016 by game industry veterans Guha and Karthik Bala to create breakthrough games that are magic. Published by Nintendo, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is the studio’s first release. The Velan team is comprised of world class game makers who have worked on several of the most innovative game franchises of the last 20 years. The studio is based in Troy, NY, the center of Upstate New York’s growing game development cluster. For more information about Velan, please visit https://www.velanstudios.com/.

About Nintendo: The worldwide pioneer in the creation of interactive entertainment, Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, manufactures and markets hardware and software for its Nintendo Switch^™ system and the Nintendo 3DS^™ family of portable systems. Since 1983, when it launched the Nintendo Entertainment System^™, Nintendo has sold more than 4.9 billion video games and more than 766 million hardware units globally, including Nintendo Switch and the Nintendo 3DS family of systems, as well as the Game Boy^™, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS^™ family of systems, Super NES^™, Nintendo 64^™, Nintendo GameCube^™, Wii^™ and Wii U^™ systems. It has also created industry icons that have become well-known, household names, such as Mario, Donkey Kong, Metroid, Zelda and Pokémon. A wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo’s operations in the Americas. For more information about Nintendo, please visit the company’s website at https://www.nintendo.com/.

Nintendo Switch, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, Nintendo DS, Super NES, Nintendo 64, GameCube, Wii and Wii U are trademarks of Nintendo.

Contacts

Media Contact:

Jeremy Long

fortyseven communications

310-709-7101

velan@fortyseven.com