When it comes to demakes, unofficial ports, and homebrew releases, our retro spidey senses immediately start tingling. And thanks to the tireless efforts of the retro gaming community, we’re seriously spoiled for choice. I was doing my usual search through the internet today (loosely known as heavily procrastinating) when I came back across a classic effort to keep the PS Vita alive with a version of Mario Kart DS that I wanted to share with some of our readers who are new to the world of emulation and homebrew games.
Posted recently by The Original ROM Hack Database on YouTube (video below) with the original V0.1 of the game created by Vita Hex back in 2021, Mario Kart Vita V1.21 is a homebrew creation, or rather ‘recreation’ for the PS Vita that ‘recreates most of the tracks and the game physics’ of Mario Kart DS, with many of the characters, karts, unlockables and controls from the original game now working on the PS Vita.
Yes, you read that right – this is a homebrew recreation with every single element of the game being remade from scratch. It’s not a port – everything you see has been designed again from scratch, and judging by the video of the gameplay and seeing Mario and the crew in action, it’s been remade incredibly well. The game works on the Vita3K PlayStation Vita emulator and also on real hardware too, so if you’re still rocking your PS Vita and fancy seeing what Yoshi and Shy Guy would look like on Sony hardware, then you can find the download file very easily on the internet!
