Someone turned Mario Kart World’s Radio Bike into a real electric motorcycle

Mario Kart has never worried much about whether its vehicles make sense in the real world. That’s probably for the best. Once you’ve accepted racing karts shaped like shoes, teddy bears and giant bugs, a motorcycle that looks like an enormous portable radio barely registers. Still, someone went and built one. Influencer Sophia Tung has turned the Tune Thumper from Mario Kart World into a full-size electric bike you can actually ride. And this isn’t just a radio-shaped shell sitting on two wheels. The speakers work. The buttons work. There’s an electric drivetrain underneath it all, and there’s even a Nintendo Switch 2 dock hidden inside the cassette compartment. It weighs around 70 pounds and runs on an 84-volt battery system. So yes, it’s very much a real machine.

The Mario Kart design needed some real-world fixing

The project started with screenshots and photogrammetry taken from Mario Kart World, giving Tung a 3D reference for the Tune Thumper’s shape and proportions. There was an immediate problem. Video game vehicles don’t have to worry about knees.

When Tung tried translating the in-game model directly into a full-size machine, the result came out too tall and too long for a human rider. That meant changing the proportions while keeping enough of the original shape for the bike to still look like the Tune Thumper.

She built the project around an existing FTO frame and reversed the front fork, shortening the wheelbase from 84 cm to roughly 77 cm. That helped bring the bike down to something closer to a usable size.

The huge radio body caused another headache. Printing the whole thing in 3D would reportedly have cost somewhere around $10,000, which is quite a lot of money to spend before you’ve even started worrying about motors, batteries and whether the thing will actually move. Instead, cabinet builder Joe DiMaio helped create the main body from MDF.

Sheets were layered, cut and shaped into the Tune Thumper’s curved radio enclosure. The team then added the big black speaker grilles, cassette section, coloured controls and oversized volume knob that make the Mario Kart version instantly recognisable.

Under the radio is a proper electric drivetrain

The silly part is on top. Underneath, things get considerably more serious. An 84-volt battery pack supplies the bike’s electric motors through a dedicated speed controller. The finished Tune Thumper reportedly has enough power to reach around 65 mph on its 13-inch wheels. That’s considerably faster than you’d expect from something that looks like it should be playing a mixtape beside a swimming pool.

The electrical system also handles the lights and other equipment fitted around the bike. MOSFET switching and DC converters manage parts of the setup, while the large speakers behind those front grilles actually play music. They’re not decorative. That left Tung with the slightly unusual job of fitting motorcycle electronics inside something designed to look like 1980s audio equipment. Space got tight quickly.

There’s a Switch 2 dock inside the cassette compartment

The cassette door might be the best bit. Open it and there’s a Nintendo Switch 2 dock tucked inside. The same area houses additional connections, and the bike also includes Apple CarPlay as part of its electronics setup. The buttons across the front aren’t fake either. They can control music playback and work alongside the lighting and audio hardware built into the machine.

Even the tall radio antenna made the jump from Mario Kart World. Of course, putting all of this hardware into a moving electric bike introduced problems that don’t exist when you’re standing in a workshop. Vibration was a big one.

During an early road test, the dashboard kept resetting, a component at the rear came loose and one of the tyres went flat. The electronics needed another round of work before the Tune Thumper could behave properly on the move.

A damaged controller was replaced. Wiring and electronics were secured more firmly, and problems involving the Switch 2 dock were also sorted out. That’s the less glamorous side of building a real Mario Kart vehicle. Things shake. Connections come loose. Tyres don’t care how accurate your replica looks.

It took about a year to finish

Tung spent roughly a year taking the Tune Thumper from game screenshots to working electric bike. The final build pulls together woodworking, motorcycle hardware, electrical engineering and a fair amount of custom electronics. There’s an MDF radio body wrapped around a functional chassis, with speakers, lighting, physical controls, CarPlay and Switch 2 hardware squeezed into the remaining space.

The finished Tune Thumper was later demonstrated at a Nintendo store, where its various controls and electronics could be shown working together. It’s still unmistakably the strange orange radio bike from Mario Kart World. The difference is that this one starts up, plays music and can actually leave the garage.

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