There are distinct similarities between Star Wars and the Super Mario series. Both involve the rescue of a princess, for one, and both feature trusty sidekicks who can only speak in yelps and growls. Both are ruled over by an evil overlord with a hard outer carapace, and both feature an array of strange-faced creatures with buggy eyes. Also importantly, both the Star Wars galaxy and the Mushroom Kingdom favor motorsports — for the former, pod racing, for the latter, racing in cutesy go-karts.

That's why Dark Pixel's Star Wars and Mario Kart mash-up makes so much sense. "Star Kart" combines the twouniverses, casting Mario Kart's drivers in Star Wars' spaceships as they drive along the infamous rainbow road, through hyperspace, past Star Destroyers, and finally down the Death Star's trench. Laser beams are replaced by red, blue, and green shells, but the animation looks as good as a real Mario Kart release, and the X-wings and A-wings in the short are just as detailed as they were in the old GameCube Rogue Leader games.

There are some serious breaches of canon — how could a Y-wing ever hope to keep pace with a TIE Interceptor? — but the video's so well made that I can just about overlook them. Best of all, it's not completely out of the realms of possibility that these ships won't one day make it to a Mario Kart. This is the game, after all, that included real-world Mercedes cars as DLC alongside baby carriages, hoverbikes, and giant sentient bullets.