Mario kart 8

[Will T.]

I've taken the liberty of updating Mario Kart 8's logo to better reflect the feature I find myself using the most, both online and off. (I hope Carpe appreciates this one.)

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[Zork Nemesis]

Incorrect, I've been told that this is Rosalina Kart 8.

[Zork Nemesis]

In one sitting I beat all 32 staff ghosts in time trial mode to unlock the Gold Tires. I am incredibly disappointed at how easy they were and wish they had done what they did with DS where there was a selection of expert ghosts to race after you beat the normal one. I did pick up a couple of shortcuts from them though (Rainbow Road 8 in particular) though I beat every single one by three seconds or more. Just to show how easy they are, I beat the ghost on Mario Circuit GBA by over ten seconds. Beat every ghost with my Mii using The Duke, Cushion wheels, and the Cloud Glider.

But, I got the tires, so now I can showboat a little on worldwide online races. As far as stats are concerned they're the same as the Metal wheels, which means high speed and weight with low acceleration and traction. Gotta work on the kart next; six out of eight 150CC cups already cleared, though I haven't played Mirror yet.

Now if you excuse me, my thumbs are a little tingly.

EDIT: Four hours later I put the pedal to the metal and got the Gold Kart in one long marathon session. The thing is shiny as hell. It turns out you don't need to three-star every cup; you only need at least one in each cup to get it which means you're allowed to come in 2nd or 3rd once per cup. Actually it might be harder to two-star a cup than three-star it.

Only 8,500 coins to the Gold Glider. Time to get to work.

[Gizanked]

You can actually get 2nd twice and still get 1 star on a cup. I'm also pretty sure they have harder ghosts available.

[Will T.]

I think the star system is as follows, based on my experiences:

3 stars = 60 points
2 stars = 57+
1 star = 54+

53 and below will not result in a star rating.


I managed to three-star every GP a few weeks ago (three-starring Mirror Mode is just as much about knowing when to quit and start over as actually being good at races - the RNG determines your victory chances more than your skills will; I am now intimately familiar with the first track in every GP in mirror ), and the reward is ...

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... Nothing. No prize except for bragging rights. Would've been nice to get a bonus movie or something at least, or maybe the otherwise tedious to get Gold Glider. Meh, still a really satisfying feeling to have beaten it all.

[Zork Nemesis]

My opinion on item balance in this installment is mixed right now. What I've seen based on a combination of offline and online play: items are strong enough to knock you down a considerable peg if you're hit, especially if you get hit in rapid succession. A red shell followed by anything else will generally take you down four or five positions unless you're half a lap ahead of the pack.

That's not really my issue. The issue I've noticed is that beyond red shells, all the items in this game don't do a whole lot to help you recover ground when you start falling behind. The new method of determining who gets what is kind of strange and often times not helpful; a single green shell in 6th for example won't help a whole lot. For once in the series I believe Stars to be rather underpowered and this is mainly because item boxes are so keen on giving everyone else triple Mushrooms if you're far enough back for Stars. Stars boost your top speed, sure, but triple Mushrooms will actually outrun the entire duration of the Star, even if both the Mushroom and Star users are taking the requisite shortcuts. The items that do let you regain ground: Bullet Bills, Golden Mushrooms, and Lightning Bolts (to some extent) require you to be too far behind before they even show themselves; by then you have no chance of recovery to begin with, and even if you are miles back you're still more likely to get triple Mushrooms than anything. This isn't helped by the fact that there are far fewer item boxes on the courses in this installment than pretty much every previous game except the SNES (three per lap usually, only two on Donut Plains 3, the third in Mario Circuit GBA is hidden and there's only one box).

What I tend to see as a result of this strange balance in online matches: there's usually two groups in a race. The guys who aren't getting hit too often will be up front duking it out with shells and fireballs while those who fall behind get nothing but Mushrooms and Stars. The Star users end up falling further behind while the Mushroom guys stay in the middle somewhere. You'd think this would mean the second group can catch up, but for some reason it doesn't happen. The Mushrooms alone, while fast, don't seem to cover enough ground to catch the pack who are generally more than capable of driving. A whole race around Yoshi's Valley online, I was taken down to 9th after being hit with a green shell in 2nd then followed up by a fireball during the first lap at the second set of items. I got mostly triple Mushrooms and Stars for the remainder of the race (there was a Golden Mushroom in there somewhere) and was only able to recover to 6th despite knowing the best route and the shortcuts. On the plus, it could've been worse; I lucked out and turned on a Star a split second before getting nailed by a Bullet Bill near the cliffs.

There's also the rare instance where someone is so far ahead that even second place is getting the good stuff. Normally that can be chalked up to someone with major driving skill and superior luck. I ran into a guy like that once. Ended up getting a Golden Mushroom in 2nd place on Toad's Turnpike because he was nearly half a lap ahead of me.

[Zork Nemesis]

I've been doing tons of Time Trials lately, and it occurs to me that there's no obvious way to race the ghosts of your friends. Does anyone know how to do this and if so do you want to swap ghosts? I'm no record breaker but I feel like some of my times are very good.

[Zork Nemesis]

The Mario Kart 8 Soundtrack is apparently not allowed on YouTube without advertisements, which means any videos I put out of Mario Kart are going to be copyright flagged. According to the video manager, it's either allow advertising or "remove the song". Removing the song more or less dulls the audio so much that it doesn't sound like anything.

...the one thing I never wanted to do with my videos. I guess it's something I'm going to have to live with; it's why I installed Adblock, but it's one of those morally conflicting things with me. It's odd though as I've never had it happen to any other video I've posted, be it TF2, Loadout, Sonic & All-Stars Racing, Poker Night, Star Fox, Super Mario World, Super Metroid. Stupid people just wanting to make a buck off our random gameplay.

Whatever, the whole point of this was to test out my new HD PVR. Here it is. Any feedback on the video quality would be appreciated. Make sure it's set to 1080p by the way.

[Will T.]

Is there some secret to using the boomerang that I'm missing entirely? It always seems to go just slightly over the heads of people I throw it at, yet anyone else who has one will hit me without fail.

On a related note, is there a cheating device for the Wii U that people might be using with this game? A series of races with a single online lobby last night featured a suspicious number of boomerangs that makes me wonder if someone was cheating to get an infinite supply.

[Zork Nemesis]

On a related note, is there a cheating device for the Wii U that people might be using with this game? A series of races with a single online lobby last night featured a suspicious number of boomerangs that makes me wonder if someone was cheating to get an infinite supply.

There's no cheating device on the market, Nintendo won't allow it (and neither will Microsoft and Sony these days, blame online gaming for that; from what I understand, Sony's anti-cheating policy is to brick offending systems if caught).

If, however, the Wii U firmware is similar enough to the Wii's, I wouldn't be surprised if people have already cracked into the Wii U itself for homebrew again. This is achieved by rooting the device, which if done incorrectly could potentially brick your system and/or invalidate your Nintendo Network account. But, when done correctly, we could see similar veins of cheating like we saw on Mario Kart Wii. I did a quick Google search and it looks like Homebrew Wii U is still in development; it appears they haven't quite made it into the kernel yet. All they've achieved is executable code via an exploit in the web browser (go figure).

Cheating aside, I find the game seems to trend items (not just triple mushrooms) as it feels like if you don't gain any ground on the lead you tend to get the same item several times. I know multiple cases where I've gotten three Piranha Plants in a row.

[Supreveio]

I thought you guys would appreciate this:

[metacide]

Very nice Suprevio.

I recently got a Wii U and Mario Kart 8 for my daughter. Sometimes I even let her play >.>

I havent had time to get the gold on every track yet (or even play every track yet) but so far I'm having a blast.

[Will T.]

Bawmp

I might be late to the party with this one, given that I just booted up my Wii U for the first time in a while and noticed the announcement under "Notifications" ... but an update for MK8 has been announced for the end of August (the 27th, to be precise). The main thing it adds is a small selection of Mercedes-Benz vehicle parts. Product placement!

More interesting, however, is that it adds the ability to display a course map on the TV while racing (no more having to glance inconveniently at the gamepad to see a map of the track!) and makes the cursor on the post-race screen remember your previous selection (no more mashing A after a race and accidentally getting stuck watching the highlight reel - if you skip it once, the cursor jumps to "Next Race" for the next time). I'm hoping the map thing applies to multiplayer as well, because one of the biggest complaints a friend of mine had when we were playing split-screen was that the gamepad player gets a map while all others do not.

[Supreveio]

Some DLC coming in November and May. With new characters, karts, and courses. (link is for Nintendo of Europe's site)

Pack 1 has Cat Peach, Tanooki Mario, and The Legend of Zelda's Link, as well as a Blue Falcon kart. Plus three additional karts and eight new courses divided into two new cups.

Pack 2 has Dry Bowser, and Animal Crossing's Isabelle and generic Villager as characters, with another four karts and two more cups worth of tracks.

Buying or pre-ordering both packs (individually or bundled) grants you a color palette selection for Yoshi and Shy Guy.


Fun fact: There's unused cup icons already in the data, but they're ugly and use older images: Yoshi Egg, Shine Sprite, Boo, and Blue Shell. If they intend to use those for this, I hope they update them to match the main ones.

[Will T.]

Wow, sixteen new courses is really impressive. I'll definitely be setting aside some cash for these.

Speculation time!
From this picture, we can see what appear to be some of the new courses:

- Wii Wario's Gold Mine (confirmed in the text)
- An F-Zero course
- An ExciteBike course (!)
- The bottom-right of that image, which is the same as this image, looks a heck of a lot like MK7's Mario Circuit, unless I'm mistaken.

The text also confirms an Animal Crossing course and a Zelda course.

I'm crossing my fingers for GCN Wario Colosseum to show up, as it remains one of my all-time favorite courses. Imagine the potential for anti-grav insanity with that course. It hasn't appeared yet, but I hope for it in each new game. I'd love to hear the music remixed in MK8's style.