The beta testing for Mario Kart GO, the follow-up to Pokemon GO, has ended in tragedy after a pile-up killed twelve people and left eighteen more seriously injured.

Mario Kart GO plays very similarly to its Pokemon GO counterpart: players could drive through areas whilst looking at their phones and race. Races weren’t determined by speed but by how many power-ups a player could collect throughout the race period.

However driving whilst looking through your phone and collecting power-ups proved not to be the safest activity after one test driver ploughed into the back of another and caused a huge high-speed pile-up.

One anonymous Nintendo employee told us: ‘It was horrific. It looked like the track we were testing on had been littered with banana skins, that’s how many damaged cars there were.’

Nintendo were hoping that the project could rival Pokemon GO in terms of success after the Pikachu-powered game release saw Nintendo stock rise by over 30%.

The project has now been completely scrapped by Nintendo.

Instead, the Japanese company will shift its attention to ‘GO-ing’ another of their popular franchises: Mario Golf.

‘It’s going to be great. You hit your ball and then spend the next thirty minutes rooting through peoples’ trash to find it,’ said Nintendo CEO Tatsumi Kimishima.