Mario Kart Arcade GP: The Arcade Cabinet Where Pac-Man Drives

GameMario Kart Arcade GPArcade cabinet

The first Mario Kart entrusted to an outside studio, Namco, and the one that puts Pac-Man in a kart alongside Mario. Released in 2005, this title exists only as an arcade cabinet: you race sitting in a cockpit, and a camera photographs the player's face before the start. This entry details its machine, its unexpected line-up and the lineage it opened up.

Released in 2005, Mario Kart Arcade GP is missing from our timelines of the series, starting with our overview from Super Nintendo to Switch 2. The reason: this particular Mario Kart never made it into a living room.

It is a parallel branch : a game developed by Namco rather than Nintendo, playable only in arcades, facing a screen that has just photographed whoever settles in behind the wheel. Eleven pilots compete in it, three of them strangers to the Mushroom Kingdom.

Contents

• The Mario Kart Nintendo did not develop
• An arcade cabinet: steering wheel, pedals and camera
• Eleven pilots, including Pac-Man
• Items and tracks that exist only there
• A parallel branch twelve years long
• Summary sheet
• FAQ

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The Mario Kart Nintendo did not develop

Until 2005, every entry had been designed in-house. The arcade cabinet breaks the rule: development was entrusted to Namco, an outside studio — a first in the history of Mario Kart.

The division of roles is clear. Nintendo remains the owner of the licence and supervises the project; Namco provides the development, the hardware and the arcade network, which it ran itself in Japan. The studio was already working for Nintendo, on Donkey Konga and on Star Fox: Assault.

• The machine runs on the arcade system Triforce, co-developed by Nintendo, Sega and Namco.
• This system reuses the technical architecture of the GameCube, the home console of the day.
• It had already hosted F-Zero AX : the 2005 cabinet does not mark the start of Nintendo's presence in arcades, it extends it to karting.

Handing Mario over to an arcade was no betrayal of its roots: Nintendo was born in arcades. Donkey Kong, in 1981, saved the firm from a stock of unsold machines, with around 132,000 cabinets shifted in Japan and North America; Mario Bros., in June 1983, was an arcade game too.

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An arcade cabinet: steering wheel, pedals and camera

The most immediate difference lies not in the content but in the cabinet: you do not play with a controller, the machine is driven with a steering wheel, pedals and a seat. A cockpit, not a sofa.

Then comes the idea that made its reputation: a built-in camera captures the player's face before the race. The portrait is not decorative — the game reuses it on the results screen, where the pilot's head appears next to the standings.

• Several machines can be linked together so that players can race in the same arcade.
• The main mode remains a Grand Prix organised into cups, as on console.
• No cabinet in the Arcade GP lineage has received a home version: going to an arcade remains the only way to play it legally.

That is why the title has stayed so little known in Europe. There is, moreover, no distribution figure : an arcade cabinet is counted in installations, not in copies sold.

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Eleven pilots, including Pac-Man

The line-up is the second departure. The game brings together eleven pilots : eight faces from the Mushroom Kingdom — Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, Toad, Donkey Kong, Wario and Bowser — and three guests from Namco.

These guests are Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man and Blinky, the red ghost. Blinky is the only one of the gang to get behind the wheel: Pinky, Inky and Clyde stay on the sidelines.

The detail is more than a curiosity: it is the first time Pac-Man and Mario are playable in the same game. It would take nine years to see the gobbler again in a mainstream Nintendo game, with Super Smash Bros. on Wii U and 3DS, in 2014.

• Pac-Man was born in 1980 at Namco; Mario appears in 1981 in the Donkey Kong cabinet, under the name Jumpman.
• This starting grid therefore brings together on the track the two founding mascots of the arcade.
• Ms. Pac-Man has become difficult to reuse for Bandai Namco, owing to a rights dispute: the publisher substitutes a replacement character for her.

Because of the dispute over Ms. Pac-Man, this starting grid remains a snapshot that could no longer be reproduced today.

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Items and tracks that exist only there

The cabinet has a wider arsenal than the console entries of the day, with many arcade-only items never carried over anywhere else. Two cases are worth pausing on, because they concern items that players think they know by heart.

The first is the Golden Mushroom. In arcades, it becomes the Miracle Mushroom and changes role: there it works like a star, grants invincibility and knocks over rival karts for five seconds. On console, it runs through the series without changing name or function, from Mario Kart DS to Mario Kart World.

The second case is the Mega Mushroom, which also has its arcade cousin: an equivalent item existed there under the English name Giant Mushroom, the giant mushroom.

The tracks, for their part, have stayed prisoners of the cabinet: all-new, they have never been reused on console, unlike the retro courses that travel from one Mario Kart to the next. At least one layout there is devoted to the world of Pac-Man.

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A parallel branch twelve years long

The series was born on 27 August 1992 with Super Mario Kart on Super Nintendo: the move into arcades comes thirteen years after the series was founded, in an already busy year.

2005 is a double year: the same year, the in-house team releases Mario Kart DS, the first entry playable online, produced by Hideki Konno. While racing was heading into arcades, the parent company was inventing networked play.

This duality sheds light on the cabinet's status in our timeline of the main games, which runs from 1992 to Mario Kart World in 2025: it does not appear there, and that is not an oversight.

This lineage lasted nonetheless, since it spawned three sequels :

• Mario Kart Arcade GP 2, in 2007.
• Mario Kart Arcade GP DX, in 2013, partially distributed internationally: some updates and some machines remain reserved for Japan.
• Mario Kart Arcade GP VR, in 2017, developed by Bandai Namco.

This last one remains the most advanced Mario experience in virtual reality and retains the DNA of 2005 : steering wheel, motion seat, items to grab, a single-lap race, a line-up cut down to Mario, Luigi, Peach and Yoshi. Twelve years separate the two cabinets, the longest parallel lineage in the series.

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Mario Kart Arcade GP at a glance

Type	Racing game on an arcade cabinet
Development	Namco
Licence	Nintendo
Release	2005
System	Triforce (GameCube architecture)
Controls	Steering wheel, pedals and seat
Pilots	11, including Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man and Blinky
Console version	None

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FAQ

• Was Mario Kart Arcade GP released on console?
  No. The game has existed only as an arcade cabinet since 2005, and no machine in the Arcade GP lineage has received a home version. Going to an arcade remains the only way to play it legally.
• Who developed Mario Kart Arcade GP?
  Namco, not Nintendo. It is the first Mario Kart entrusted to an outside studio: Nintendo remains the owner of the licence and supervises the project, while Namco provides the development, the hardware and the arcade network.
• Is Pac-Man playable in Mario Kart Arcade GP?
  Yes. The game brings together eleven pilots: eight faces from the Mushroom Kingdom and three guests from Namco, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man and Blinky. It is the first time Pac-Man and Mario are playable in the same game.
• Why does the cabinet photograph the player?
  A built-in camera captures their face before the race. The portrait is then reused by the game, notably on the results screen, where the player's head appears next to their ranking.
• How many cabinets does the Arcade GP lineage have?
  Four: Mario Kart Arcade GP in 2005, Mario Kart Arcade GP 2 in 2007, Mario Kart Arcade GP DX in 2013 and Mario Kart Arcade GP VR in 2017. Twelve years separate the first from the last.

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