That feeling when you’re in first place, and there’s a red shell closing in
Research has discovered that Mario Kart is the video game that causes the most stress in gamers.
A new study from Bonus Finder took 14 active gamers and monitored their heart rate while playing 16 of the most popular and intense games across consoles, PC and mobile.
Mario Kart was found to be the game that caused heart rate to rise the most over 30 minutes of play. The game increased the heartrates of the participants by an average of 21BPM – that is a jump of 32.81%.
FIFA 20 came second, with an average increase of 20BPM.
Here is the top five:
- Mario Kart – 32.81% average BPM increase
- FIFA 20 – 31.25% average BPM increase
- Call of Duty – 29.69% average BPM increase
- Dark Souls – 28.13% average BPM increase
- Fortnite – 26.56% average BPM increase
The study also measured the peak BPM increase during playtime, which was topped by Dark Souls III. The notorious tough action-adventure game saw BPM rise as high as 127 BPM – a 98.44% increase on the group baseline resting rate of 64 BPM.
Coming second in peak BPM increase was online multiplayer hit Fall Guys, which will make sense to anyone who has desperately tried to make to the end of one of the game’s obstacle courses in the nick of time. Mario Kart was third, Street Fighter was fourth, and FIFA came in fifth.
The Mario Kart franchise started with Super Mario Kart, which was released on the Super NES all the way back in 1992. The game popularised the go-kart style of racing games, eschewing speed and realism for power-up, obstacles and cute characters.
A Mario Kart title has graced nearly every major Nintendo console since the 1990s, and have consistently been some of the company’s biggest-selling titles. The latest version, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit on the Switch, brought the game into the real world by including actual RC cars to race around your living room.
