The Mario Kart series has been getting players revved up for the best part of 20 years, and today the fan-favourite franchise moves into a whole new gear!

Mario Kart 7 for Nintendo 3DS boasts the trademark racing action players have come to love, but ramps things up with 3D graphics, kart customisation features, masses of multiplayer options and courses that take the race across land, sea and air!

Play as all your favourite characters as you compete on a combination of 32 brand new and remastered courses, and enjoy fresh Time Trials challenges thanks to StreetPass and SpotPass content. Of course, Mario Kart has always been about multiplayer madness, and Mario Kart 7 delivers it in abundance!

With 8-player races online and offline, you’ll find plenty of willing opponents to pit yourself against, and this time you can even participate in special communities.

Getting started with Mario Kart 7 Communities

After you enjoyed a bit of Online Multiplayer you’ll be able to create a community of your own. Select an icon to represent your community, enter a name and description for it, choose whether you’ll be racing at 50cc, 100cc, 150cc or in Mirror Mode, or engaging in a Coin or Balloon Battle; and select whether to play with all items, no items, or one of several presets. That’s all there is to it! Your community will be all set up and you’ll receive a community code which you can share with an unlimited amount of your friends to invite them to join you.

Joining an existing community is as simple as entering a community code and before you know it you will be racing against your friends! The number of participants in a community is unlimited but at any given time all players will be divided into groups of maximum eight contestants.

A leaderboard keeps track of the scores of the best 7 players, displaying more details for the top 3. Each community’s scores will be reset every month so it’s never too late to join the party! Plus, you can create or take part in up to eight communities at a time – but note that you can only delete a community you created when there are no other players left in it.

Getting together with friends on the courses of the Mushroom Kingdom has never been easier, so why not head on over to the Items section of our Mario Kart 7 website and invite your friends by sending them a Spiny Shell or Triple Banana?

Mario Kart 7 is in shops now, only for Nintendo 3DS.