Mario's arcade racing debut gets pushed back from the fall to December in Japan.
Mario Kart Arcade GP was first shown at the Japanese Arcade Operators Union show in February. The game, developed by Namco on the Triforce arcade hardware, promised to bring the Mario Kart action we all love to the arcades, and it looked like it would do the job. Reports from the AOU show floor indicated that the game would be released to Japanese arcades in the fall of this year.
Not anymore. It seems that the release of Mario Kart Arcade has been pushed back to December. No reasons were given for the slip, but it may not be an accident that new release date of the arcade game falls closer to the expected release date of Mario Kart DS, which is also due for a Japanese release at the end of the year.
This delay for the Japanese version of the arcade game means that if an English version of Mario Kart Arcade was coming stateside, it probably won't be in 2005. Hopefully, the game will be on the E3 show floor, as the Triforce-powered F-Zero AX was in 2003. If it is, we'll bring you the latest in our E3 coverage, so stay tuned.
