Mario Kart: Koopa's Challenge

Description

Hololabs played a significant role as a contractor tasked with the development of gameplay and interactive media for the theme park attraction called Mario Kart - Koopa's Challenge, which premiered at Universal Studios Japan in the spring of 2021. The attraction allows riders to throw shells at enemies, fight boss battles, steer the vehicle during the race, and digital media is displayed both on projection screens and in an augmented reality visor.

Mario Kart AR Visor (Photo courtesy of Universal)

Beyond game development, members of the Hololabs team helped to develop and troubleshoot the core architecture of the ride, including real-time messaging, synchronized events, distributed rendering, and VR simulation. We worked with other vendors to ensure that the game reacted properly to data from the ride system and helped to integrate other show elements such as projection, audio, lighting, and special effects. As the ride reached maturity, we also developed operations software to assist with the deployment and distribution of the game to hundreds of computers, along with real-time monitoring.