Anki's New Car Kit Lets You Build Your Own Tracks With 'Overdrive'

The gearheads at toy company Anki stumbled upon a little slice of genius when they pulled Anki Drive out of the garage back in 2013.

Essentially slot cars without the slots, the system lets players use mobile devices to steer sleek, futuristic toy cars around what looks like a flat sheet of thick plastic. It’s a killer trick — Drive was the runaway hit of Thanksgiving 2014 for the Silverman clan — but it’s been hampered by one pretty sizable problem: You can’t make your own tracks. No ramps for you.

That changes later this year. Anki Overdrive trades Drive's fixed tracks for a new modular format that lets players build their own. It’s probably what Anki should have been from the starting line.

The upcoming Overdrive Starter Kit ($150) includes two new cars, a four-car charging base, two little risers, and 10 track pieces, which can be arranged in eight different layouts. The track segments snap together using high-powered magnets and initially come in an assortment of straightaways and curves.

Cue the somewhat misleading trailer:

Right, so your cars don’t actually respawn or anything. But indeed, Anki is pulling a Lego by offering eight expansion kits ($10 to $30 apiece) that dramatically increase track variety and intensity. A Collision Kit introduces a T-shaped intersection, an Elevation Kit adds hills and overpasses, and a Launch Kit lets your cars get some air. Mix and match ’em, and it starts looking an awful lot like a sci-fi take on those awesome Tyco slot car sets that were all the rage in the 1970s.

But Anki makes those look positively prehistoric. Each of the cars packs a 50MHz computer and camera system to keep it on the track, while smart AI programming ensures that even computer-controlled cars won’t veer off into the coffee table. The cars can fight, too, firing virtual lasers and raising virtual shields as they whip around the track.

Overdrive adds several new cars, and while the guts are similar, the looks have been upgraded substantially. New, brighter lights make it easier to get immediate feedback on what’s happening to your car. The paint jobs are fancier, and unlike the obtuse scientific-naming convention in Anki Drive (Corax? Kourai? Boson?), the names actually match the cars. Groundshock lays mines. Thermo is flame-based. Skull is obviously out to rough you up. Best of all, it’s backward-compatible, so your V1 cars will work just fine with the new tracks.

The added personality extends to Overdrive’s other big offering: a narrative. It’s the year 2050, the cars are self-driving, and Overdrive is a sort of combat sport. This was hinted at when the company introduced AI commanders over the holidays, but it’s got dozens more coming in 2015 that Anki says will help explain the game’s Real Steel backstory via a legit campaign mode.

To be honest, I don’t think anyone is complaining that there isn’t enough fantasy lore in their mobile-device-controlled newfangled slot cars. But hey, if it worked for Transformers, maybe it will work for Anki, too. Anki Overdrive makes its debut this weekend at the New York Toy Fair 2015, and it’s due to race into stores in September 2015.

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