It's introducing new toy vehicles, new gameplay mechanics, a new app and new modular race tracks that let players design their own custom race circuits. Today, Anki has announced that Overdrive will start shipping to retailers on September 20th in the US, UK, Germany and Canada. It also offered more details about the new cars and revealed two more game modes called Time Trial and King of the Hill. I had a chance to play around with Anki Overdrive at the company's office in San Francisco, and while I can't say it's perfect, I was impressed at how much simple toy cars could give me the feeling of being in a video game.

And that's no accident. For almost a year now, Anki has been hard at work at reimagining its robotic race cars as more of a video game. It hired Joby Otero, the former creative director for Skylanders, as its new chief creative officer. It also hired a slew of talent from gaming companies like EA and Activision to work on art, sound, writing, character development and mission design. "You can think of Anki as a game studio within the larger robotics company," says Mark Palatucci, Anki's co-founder and Chief Product Officer. "We wanted to bring the richness of the video game world to a physical place."