Ah yes, Akihabara. When you think of Tokyo's "Electric Town", you probably think of retro game shops, arcades, and a sea of anime, manga, and collectible figurines. Add go-karts to that list.

Remember when every other video you saw was a parody of the film Downfall? It's not over yet and somehow we missed this particular version that puts Hitler in a Mario Kart to do battle with Hermann Fegelein. It is ridiculous, and the amount of time that went into it is slightly disturbing.

Now, this is exergaming with a purpose. Modder Brent Smith of Canada rigged an old exercise bike with some sensors, switches, transistors, and the indispensable Arduino microcontroller, turning the whole thing into a Super Nintendo controller for use in Mario Kart.

To mark the release of Mario Kart 7, Nintendo commissioned West Coast Customs to build life-size replicas of Mario and Luigi's actual karts from the game. Do they actually drive? Of course not they actually do drive, and they are capable of making grown men smile like little boys.

The dudes from Japanese car site Cliccar get out of their boring civvies and got dressed up as Mario and Luigi. Then, they hopped in two street legal X-Karts and took to the avenues and boulevards of Tokyo.

Rémi Gaillard, the crazy Mario-impersonating go-karting Frenchman who made the original real-life Mario Kart is back at it again. This time, Rémi show us where he gets the bananas from — le supermarché! [The Daily What via Le Autoblog]

A clever tagger in Portland, Oregon has painted the Williams Avenue bike lane with various items found in Nintendo's Mario Kart racing series. Bikers can power up with stars, mushrooms and shells, but beware the banana peel.