Have you ever played Mario kart and wondered what it would be like in real life? Well, our team got to find out as we headed to in Gateshead (it’s literally right on our doorstep, it would be rude not to!). Battlekart is basically where gaming and technology meet go karting. It’s not just Mario-kart style racing either, there’s a whole range of different games to play. We were raring to find out what it was all about.
We were raring to go!
We arrived at Battlekart and met with our host who gave us a safety briefing and told us how to use the go karts. She told us we would be playing BattleRace, BattleFoot, BattleColour and BattleSnake in our session. We were told that instructions on how to play each game would come up on the screen on our go karts, meaning we would have to pick it up on the fly. All of the games were pretty simple to pick up.
Briefing complete, we headed to our karts, which to our surprise had our names on the back in lights. The first game we played was BattleRace, this basically was like playing Mario Kart but in real life. The screens all around the track changed to a cartoon video game style. Arrows on the floor directed us to the starting line, then it was on your marks, get set, go!
Let's a go!!!
We had to speed our way around the track to win the race. If you tried to cut a corner the track would slow you down. The idea was to pick up bonuses which give you special powers. You could pick up rockets which you could fire at the person in front of you, which would slow them down. There’s nothing quite like slowing someone down as you fly past laughing like Bowser. You could also pick up oil (not real oil!) to spill on the track to slow people down behind you. If you picked up Nitro, you would boost your speed, no joke the wind went through your hair when you used it!
Our second game was BattleFoot, which was where we got split into two teams to play football in the go karts. Each team had to go to their side of the pitch to wait for the game to start. The aim was simply to hit the animated ball into the net on the other side of the pitch. This is harder than it looks! You could move the ball by touching it with the front, side and back of the go kart. The ball would bounce off the wall too.
The karts had our names on the back!
Goals scored, it was time for our third game BattleColour. In this game our screens told us that we had been assigned a colour. We had to colour the floor with our colour. At the end of the game, the team with the most coloured squares wins. By the end the floor looked like the dancefloor at a retro club!
Finally, we played the game BattleSnake. If you have ever owned a ‘brick’ Nokia, you will be familiar with the concept of snake. You had to drive over bits of fruit to make your tail grow behind you. The aim was to make sure that your snake was the longest. Sound simple right? Well, not quite. You couldn’t bang into your own tail otherwise you would have to start again. And you also couldn’t bang into the walls or cross your opponent’s tails either. I won this round, finally being a nerd with a Nokia paid off!
We had to use our special powers to get ahead
With that the games came to an end. The leader board had tallied up our scores. Christie came first, Akash came second, and Rebekah came third. Obviously, this meant they had to pose on the winners’ podium. We had a great time. There were other games that we didn’t get chance to try this time which included BattleVirus and BattlePool. BattleVirus is where you have to work as a team to stop a virus. BattlePool is as it sounds, it’s pool with go karts where you’re in two teams and only one can win.
Afterwards we headed out for a two-course meal at Revolucion De Cuba in the Bigg Market. A fitting end to the go karting sesh.
We would really recommend this to stag and hen groups alike. It’s fun, unique and just the right amount of competitive. Make sure to get on the itinerary for a full throttle last night of freedom!
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