"This is the culmination of over a decade of work": Nintendo's forgotten Mario Kart game is finally playable again 21 years later as the best GameCube emulator gets even better

Mario Kart Arcade GP key art, with Pac-Man and Mario racing against each other.

Decades ago, Nintendo embarked upon a once-unthinkable partnership with Sega and Namco to bring a new arcade platform to life – one powered by the GameCube. That platform, known as Triforce, would host a number of unique games, including a pair of original Mario Kart titles. For years, those games have largely been inaccessible, but that's finally changing thanks to the excellent Wii and GameCube emulator, Dolphin.

I have vague memories of seeing Triforce arcade games referenced in the pages of Nintendo Power, but I never saw any of the machines in person, and that's true for most gamers outside of Japan. The platform's most notable legacy is probably Sega's F-Zero AX, licensing Nintendo's futuristic racing series for an ultra-hard modern arcade game, which would eventually be ported back home in somewhat altered form as F-Zero GX.