DeathSprint 66 has made me see Mario Kart in a new way. The brief teaser shown at today's Future Games Show (above) doesn't contain any gameplay, but game director Andrew Willans showed me a short video of the sci-fi racing game in action at GDC this week. It's a lot like Mario Kart—simple arcade racing controls, weapons, traps, maneuvers like slipstreaming and drifting—with one major exception being that I don't remember any version of Mario Kart containing a gore system.
The Nintendo cart racing series has never embraced its true nature as a ferocious deathsport, but DeathSprint doesn't sugar coat it, and it's not hard to guess the inspiration: "It's The Running Man as reimagined for a new generation," said Willans. He means the Stephen King novel first of all—the game directly references the pen name King used for the book, Bachman—but also credits as inspiration the movie adaptation and other sci-fi takes on the idea of "entertaining ourselves to death," like Death Race 2000.
