There are many who lament the effects of YouTube on our children’s minds, as unvetted dross-like entertainment is churned out separately from the eyes of regulatory bodies, inevitably crammed with product placement and woeful thought of child safety. But then, there are people who spend three months figuring out how to fire Mario Kart-style green shells from the roof of their car.
This is thanks to Alex Corea, known on YouTube as No Bitrate, a sort of baby Mark Rober, with swearing. The channel’s ethos is to build “some of the dumbest, most dangerous things online (that are allowed on YouTube).” But that does rather sell it short, given the Rober-like efforts to include a hefty amount of educational-adjacent information on the physics, math, and experimentation involved. But yes, it’s also far dumber in the best way.
On the pretence that other similar channels are too scared to try, Corea set out to be the first to recreate a real-life version of Mario Kart’s green shells, attempting to base as much as possible on what’s modelled in the games, and then throwing aside the bits that make it impossible.
A lot of guesstimation takes place, because of course this is about translating a cartoon concept to the real world, but there are nods toward attempting to make the shells the correct size, and indeed to work out the speed they would need to travel in order to cause the sorts of damage they see in the games. (Which also meant throwing out how fast they move in the games, because it turns out Nintendo does not respect physics.)
Then, once rockets become involved, comes the added challenge of figuring out how to launch the shells from the roof of a moving car, and be able to have them hit another car, all without breaking the law. Ironically, it turns out that using a remote-controlled car to ensure human safety would make this illegal, but sitting in the car themselves is juuuust fine.
Having spent years watching Mythbusters, it’s rather hard to cope with the absolute lack of the safety standards that came with going out on FTC-regulated cable, as Corea and chums fire dubiously legal rockets in the desert with no more protection than a pair of shades. (Although, eventually, a tank-like windshield, thank god.)
The results, however, are glorious. If…slightly dissimilar to Mario Kart’s own shelling.
Nonsense like this always offers me hope. These are smart people doing a dumb thing in a smart way, the sort of thing that can point a lot of young minds toward STEM subjects. It’s also superbly edited, if a little frenetic, and funny.
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