While Mario Kart GP marked the arrival of Nintendo’s popular franchise game to the arcade, I honestly have only seen a cabinet once – which was at ASI and it was a GP2 cab. It seems to receive mixed reviews from players and operators would probably be more willing to carry the game if it didn’t cost them $9000 per cabinet and for that price the game doesn’t do much to stand out from Double Dash on the GameCube, much less the newest installment of MK on the Wii.
But maybe if they added this new motion-base system from Force Dynamics they would have a winner. At least it looks like putting the original Mario Kart onto this system is fun. The Force Dynamics 301 has been made for a variety of venues but according to their website, it could be used in an arcade as well. The platform is open-source so it looks like anything can go into it, they can also customize the platform for you. They say it’s low cost but from briefly investigating their website I didn’t see pricing or an ordering page. Of course motion simulation is gaining steam in arcades with one developer (IMOtion) already dedicated to nothing but those kind of games and both Sega and GlobalVR have created motion based systems for some of their more popular games.
