Lego Luigi Mario Kart set is the biggest announcement of Mario Day

Nintendo has had a few special reveals for MAR10 Day, including a new Lego set and a release date for Yoshi And The Mysterious Book.

It’s Mario Day today and to commemorate the occasion, Nintendo has released three new Mario games on Nintendo Switch Online. They’ve also just announced a release date for Yoshi And The Mysterious Book but, as has become commonplace on this day, the biggest reveal was for a new Lego set for adults.

Nintendo and Lego have been working together for many years now, with both sets aimed at kids and much more expensive ones meant for adults – such as this year’s first wave of Pokémon releases. You usually get one or two Mario themed adult ones a year, which Lego often waits to unveil on Mario Day.

This year’s is a companion piece to the Mario Kart set from last year, which features Mario in a standard kart. This one is in the same scale but instead has Luigi driving a Mach 8 car.

The Mach 8 is from Mario Kart 8 but sadly there doesn’t seem to be an attempt to replicate the infamous Luigi death stare, although since it’s Lego you could just turn his smile upside down. Lego also has a line of smaller Mario Kart sets aimed at kids but neither those nor these bigger ones are based on Mario Kart World.

Altogether, the new set is made up of 2,234 Lego pieces and measures 41cm long and 25cm high. The steering wheel turns the front and back wheels, as well as the flames of the exhaust at the back. Luigi himself is also posable, with moveable head, arms, and hands.

You can take the kart off the stand, and roll it around like a regular toy, but when it’s on it, the idea is that you can pose it so it looks like it’s doing a drift.

Since this is Lego, and there’s a lot of pieces involved, it’s not cheap, but you can pre-order it now from the official website for £159.99, ahead of its April 1 launch.

The annoucement today seems to establish Mario Day as the time to announce new Lego sets, so it’s going to be interesting to see what happens next year. Princess Peach in a kart, maybe?

In terms of video game news, the most notable thing today is that Yoshi And The Mysterious Book will be released on May 21, for a relatively modest £49.99.

The game was unveiled last year but it’s never been clear exactly what it is, even though it continues the 2D platformer motif of most of Yoshi’s other adventures.

Although Bowser Jr. and a Shy Guy are in the trailer there’s still no indication that the game contains any combat, with Yoshi instead researching the fauna of the game world, in order to fill in an encyclopaedia.

This seems to result in the discovery of a lot of additional abilities and power-ups in what may be the first ever cosy platformer.

We’re intrigued but the release of the new trailer today only increases speculation of when the next ‘proper’ Nintendo Direct might be. Nintendo has had six so far this year, but they’ve all had specific subjects rather than the more general interest first party one that fans are dying for.

There’re currently no rumours as to when there might be one, but it may be longer than expected as Nintendo also released a new trailer for Super Mario Bros. Wonder – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park today.

That’s out on March 26, so apparently they didn’t want to wait for a new Nintendo Direct to highlight that one, which could mean we don’t get a general Direct until June…

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