Mario Kart 8 / Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Re: Mario Kart 8

Mario Kart 8 played better than Mario Kart Wii and I had more fun with it than I had with Wii, so there's that.
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

MKWii definitely has its fair share of problems like Funky Bike GCN, lightweights not being able to succeed because of the Funky meta game and their weight (seriously, you get bumped around A LOT as a small character; they just can't compete with Funky), awful physics, some mediocre tracks, overabundance of blue shells, and don't even get me started on the thundercloud. This game definitely has issues, but I still have the most fun with this Mario Kart than any other. Even when you get knocked down, you can still make a comeback and I find that fun and fulfilling. Just when you think you're out, you really aren't. Even though blue shells appear too often and thunderclouds are stupid, I feel like the item balance is pretty good. It also helps that the character roster is pretty good. My favorite roster so far. No real complaints with it. Oh yeah, there's custom tracks and Wiimmfi too. That helps give the game longevity and replayability.

I get why people don't like this game, but it's still my favorite. I just have the most fun with it. It's kind of addicting if you ask me.
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

MnSG said:
Cirdec said:
If that's the case, for me it is a sign that MK8 is not as fun as MKWii. The main reason is the item distribution is really terrible in MK8, first set of item boxes often decides the race outcome, it is so frustrating. At least in MKWii you can make comebacks with good item usage.

Unfortunately, Mario Kart Wii is far less balanced than Mario Kart 8 when you take into account the sheer abundance of Spiny Shells taking away your items, the stand-still mini-turbo negates the main weakness of the poor accelerating vehicles, the stat bonus system is heavily imbalanced, and the bikes are too overpowered with their ability to perform wheelies.

Mario Kart 8 does fix up these issues, so the Spiny Shell is less common and doesn't leave you itemless, everyone's stats are balanced out (excluding mini-turbo), and bikes are far less overpowering.

I would glady take an abundance of blue shell for a fair item distribution, something like, not getting a banana when you are 12th or a mushroom for being 7th while the guy in front of you gets triple. MKWii may have imbalanced vehicules and stat distribution, but at least the game is fun to play.
And Mario Kart 8 still has vehicule imbalance, because max speed with 2 or 3 acceleration is the way to go, that means heavyweights are again the characters to pick. Instead of Funky Kong, the choice is up to 4 characters, but result is the same.
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

Yes , that's also true.

While Funky Kong and also Daisy were abused in Wii Online , this is the same in 8 with characters like Bowser , Morton Koopa or Rosalina being totally abused only. Once again , heavy characters dominate and lightweights suck more than ever.
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

Cirdec said:
boo hoo items

im playing mario kart wii with friends almost every week since a year and ive stopped seeing the differences in the item systems between mario kart games

in all games the items are designed to fuck you up if youre in front and benefit you when youre not. mkwii and 8 are no different in that.

Really, people who take mario kart too seriously to the point where random differences in what is a random system to begin with bother them have completely missed the point of the game imo

/rant
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

Cirdec said:
I would glady take an abundance of blue shell for a fair item distribution, something like, not getting a banana when you are 12th or a mushroom for being 7th while the guy in front of you gets triple. MKWii may have imbalanced vehicules and stat distribution, but at least the game is fun to play.
And Mario Kart 8 still has vehicule imbalance, because max speed with 2 or 3 acceleration is the way to go, that means heavyweights are again the characters to pick. Instead of Funky Kong, the choice is up to 4 characters, but result is the same.

Technically, five characters, since the Large Mii has the same stats as Bowser, Wario, Morton, and Dry Bowser. However, I have remembered moments where the lighter characters have taken the victory lap, so it's not like using a heavy character is a guaranteed win.

Anyway, the problem with Mario Kart Wii's online is that you pretty much have to use a fast bike, or else you're pretty much prone to losing.

At least with Mario Kart 8, even lightweight users can potentially win a race with slower vehicle combinations, since players with good leads can potentially end up having disastrous finishes once the Spiny Shells, Red Shells, and Lightning start coming their way.

Sadly, the lack of stat diversity between characters means that it's not possible to have a 3/6 ground speed and 5/6 acceleration combo. And the presence of acceleration tiers in the 50cc, 100cc, and 150cc just adds to the insults.

Swiftie_Luma said:
Yes , that's also true.

While Funky Kong and also Daisy were abused in Wii Online , this is the same in 8 with characters like Bowser , Morton Koopa or Rosalina being totally abused only. Once again , heavy characters dominate and lightweights suck more than ever.

I don't think Rosalina is abused as often as the likes of Bowser, Wario, Morton, and Dry Bowser. Ever since the Blue Falcon (followed by the Streetle) entered the scene, 5.5/6 ground speed and 2/6 acceleration seemed to be a more common trend, based on my Mario Kart 8 online racing history.
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

I might do another wall of text (and I did, but then I was logged out), but since it is better to indeed move on and stop doing pointless walls of text, I will just post a video, similar to a one I already posted, but even more extreme than that:


This was 200cc, of course, and even there it is extremely rare and mainly happens on specific courses like that one. Still, I think it might be a good starting point and a case for Nintendo to study so it can become more common in future games.

Regarding modding, I wonder how much is due to the size of the user base (still between 1/4 and 1/5 that of MKW) and how much is due to the higher difficulties in creating courses with higher quality assets and a more complex structure due to antigravity.
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

I'm rather surprised that there still isn't a guide for modifying character and/or vehicle part attributes. Must be rather hard to crack, or no one even cares.

Not that it matters in the end though, since you can't do stuff like that and play online races without the risk of getting banned. And of course, Mario Kart 8 hacking requires different steps than what can be done with Super Smash Bros. for Wii U; Mario Kart 8 doesn't use SD cards after all.
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

A51_Trooper said:

That really isn't what I meant. Something in the game's coding determines the stats for the characters and vehicles. If the coding can be cracked, then implementing more stat diversity could become possible. But again, you do risk getting banned from online if you try to use the hacks in an online environment.
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

Swiftie_Luma said:
I will also argue that MKWii took a bigger leap than 8 at being inovative and making the franchise something else.

Wii added several faces to the roster , added bikes , the wii wheel stuff that many people use (dont know why , i honestly dont use it) , tricks , 12 character races and the first big online mode.

The only outstanding thing 8 really added over wii was graphical improvement and somewhat control/physics improvement ; i wont say ''balance'' because everything OP item wise was eliminated in 7 not in 8.

8 is HD Mario Kart with a forgettable gimmick , terrible voice acting and on a very underrated console that Nintendo decided to not to support properly.

Of course its gonna fall in the abyss. Im honestly prepared to move on to MK9 because 8 clearly has nothing i would miss ; all the items i miss are in MKWii and the car part i miss are in 7.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS POST. AMEN TO THIS, A MILLION TIMES.

Mario Kart 8 sucks big time. It failed to be a worthy successor to the franchise. To me, it's just HD Mario Kart 7, which wasn't even that good to begin with.

Maybe I'm just biased because it can't compare to Double Dash. Mario Kart really peaked at Double Dash. It's undoubtedly the best of them all.
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

Warning, highly opinionated post ahead. Had to strongly disagree with a statement being made about Double Dash being regarded as "undoubtedly the best of them all".

Double Dash is outdated and inferior to recent Mario Karts who have refined and improved driving mechanics and course design.

I can never find a reason to go back to Double Dash aside from "I can use Baby Mario and Baby Luigi at the same time." Virtually everything else about that game, later Mario Karts did the said mechanic a magnitude better.

Course design? Mario Kart: Double Dash has pretty bland and same-y ones. You have the stock three circuits, two city courses, desert, two ocean/beach courses, two stadiums, and two jungles. Baby Park is one of the more unique courses. It's an improvement over Super Circuit and 64, but later Mario Karts received more course diversity and better designs due to better production value and you know, having more entries and more ideas with stuff like gliding and anti-gravity allows for more interesting courses to be thought up of. People like to diss on anti-gravity and gliding and underwater for being like, gimmicky, but I think they add more to interesting stage design rather than offer something entirely new. Also, later Mario Kart games have more tracks in general, having the new retro and refurbished line-up of courses.

Kart control? Double Dash's karts felt like butterwagons. Later games having tighter controls make me kinda hate Double Dash's control scheme now. It hasn't aged gracefully at all.

Kart variety? Nearly half of Double Dash's karts are recolors, and a good portion are locked away because of your class. It is the first game to introduce unique karts, yes, but again, later games expanded upon the kart variety and I think Mario Kart 7's system of changing kart stats depending on your size is a brilliant idea compared to being unable to use a nice car you want to drive in simply because you're too small for it.

Mario Kart only started receiving good graphics at the generation with Mario Kart 8, something that I was very pleased to see. The previous Mario Kart installments now utterly pale in comparison with the graphics leap.

Soundtrack? Mario Kart 8 destroys the earlier installments in terms of sound tracks, plus I love the first place beat thing they introduce to Mario Kart 7.

Battle mode? Mario Kart DS introduced the idea of a single player battle mode and that was a great thing to introduce. I could never touch the earlier Mario Kart battle modes because I did not like battling against my sister and I prefer CPU opponents. Mario Kart 8 doesn't have a good battle mode but it's still leagues ahead of the multiplayer-exclusive battle modes in the first Mario Karts.

Items? All Mario Karts had their fair share of bullcrap, no games are an exception to bad items, and this varies from user to user but for me, Mario Kart 8's items are bad as Mario Kart Wii's and Mario Kart: Double Dash's items.

So in the end, a lot of problems I have with Double Dash is mostly due to its age and because later Mario Karts had improved the formula with more installments and better hardware. What made it good for its time doesn't mean it'll be exactly as fun to play now so hence why I'd rate it lower than Kart 7 even though it did introduce the phrase "Baby Luigi" to my overall lexicon and identity in general.
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

To add to the previous post, Double Dash!! is actually imbalanced with the special item system. Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong can get Giant Bananas in 1st place, and that item is rather strong with its immunity to most normal items, including Red Shells.

Anyway, while Double Dash!! was good during its time, it pretty much struggles to compete with the newer Mario Karts now, simply because the newer installments have more tracks, vehicle choices are less restricted (except for Mario Kart Wii), and everyone is treated equally with the items that they can acquire.
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

Baby Luigi said:
Warning, highly opinionated post ahead. Had to strongly disagree with a statement being made about Double Dash being regarded as "undoubtedly the best of them all".

Double Dash is outdated and inferior to recent Mario Karts who have refined and improved driving mechanics and course design.

I can never find a reason to go back to Double Dash aside from "I can use Baby Mario and Baby Luigi at the same time." Virtually everything else about that game, later Mario Karts did the said mechanic a magnitude better.

Course design? Mario Kart: Double Dash has pretty bland and same-y ones. You have the stock three circuits, two city courses, desert, two ocean/beach courses, two stadiums, and two jungles. Baby Park is one of the more unique courses. It's an improvement over Super Circuit and 64, but later Mario Karts received more course diversity and better designs due to better production value and you know, having more entries and more ideas with stuff like gliding and anti-gravity allows for more interesting courses to be thought up of. People like to diss on anti-gravity and gliding and underwater for being like, gimmicky, but I think they add more to interesting stage design rather than offer something entirely new. Also, later Mario Kart games have more tracks in general, having the new retro and refurbished line-up of courses.

Kart control? Double Dash's karts felt like butterwagons. Later games having tighter controls make me kinda hate Double Dash's control scheme now. It hasn't aged gracefully at all.

Kart variety? Nearly half of Double Dash's karts are recolors, and a good portion are locked away because of your class. It is the first game to introduce unique karts, yes, but again, later games expanded upon the kart variety and I think Mario Kart 7's system of changing kart stats depending on your size is a brilliant idea compared to being unable to use a nice car you want to drive in simply because you're too small for it.

Mario Kart only started receiving good graphics at the generation with Mario Kart 8, something that I was very pleased to see. The previous Mario Kart installments now utterly pale in comparison with the graphics leap.

Soundtrack? Mario Kart 8 destroys the earlier installments in terms of sound tracks, plus I love the first place beat thing they introduce to Mario Kart 7.

Battle mode? Mario Kart DS introduced the idea of a single player battle mode and that was a great thing to introduce. I could never touch the earlier Mario Kart battle modes because I did not like battling against my sister and I prefer CPU opponents. Mario Kart 8 doesn't have a good battle mode but it's still leagues ahead of the multiplayer-exclusive battle modes in the first Mario Karts.

Items? All Mario Karts had their fair share of bullcrap, no games are an exception to bad items, and this varies from user to user but for me, Mario Kart 8's items are bad as Mario Kart Wii's and Mario Kart: Double Dash's items.

So in the end, a lot of problems I have with Double Dash is mostly due to its age and because later Mario Karts had improved the formula with more installments and better hardware. What made it good for its time doesn't mean it'll be exactly as fun to play now so hence why I'd rate it lower than Kart 7 even though it did introduce the phrase "Baby Luigi" to my overall lexicon and identity in general.

Your opinion is fascinating because it states things that are nothing but the pure truth.

My main reason to always go back to Double Dash is being able to play with two characters at the same time. Racing while teaming up with a friend, or any of my sisters, just screams "FUN" to me. It's the strategy of telling my partner to do a slide attack to help me dodge a Banana that's staring at me with its creepy grin waiting for me to inevitably slip on it because of the sloppy controls. It's passing my partner the item I have quickly because if I don't we won't be able to destroy the incoming Red Shell and furthermore make the alarm shut up. It's telling them "Let's switch" when I don't feel like driving anymore. It's telling them to tap the Control Stick from side to side while I drift so we can get a speed boost. It's punching however comes near me with a slide attack just because. Those things are not offered by any other Mario Kart game.

I kind of agree with the course design thing in terms of there not being too much variety, style-wise. I think that the award for the best track compilation goes to Mario Kart Wii, in terms of both difficulty and style. I happen to think that Double Dash has many tracks that require a lot of skill, its Rainbow Road being the hardest Rainbow Road so far, at least for me. Wario Colosseum, DK Jungle, Bowser Castle, and Sherbet Land are not easy tracks. In Mario Kart 8, I didn't find a single track that made me say "Wow, that was hard". All of them are boring and plain in terms of layout. The only thing they have going for them is that they're beautiful. That's all.

Double Dash's controls suck. That's an irrefutable fact. It's a drift fest and the option of having Automatic cars was welcome with open arms by me.

I don't really care about car variety because I just go for whatever looks cool. I never, ever look at stats. Sometimes you guys start talking about the data and tons of numbers here and I'm like "Ok, they're taking it way too far" but that's ok if you guys are into that.

The graphics were really pretty at their time, and I even think that Double Dash has better graphics than Mario Kart Wii. Of course, 8 is unbeatable in that aspect, but it's unfair to compare games with a 12-year difference. I do understand that 8 did more to improve the graphics department than Double Dash did, however.

The soundtrack in 8 SUCKS hard for me. I'm not going to lie, I don't like it in the slightest. Let me set this straight: none of the songs in Mario Kart 8 are bad. All of them are beautifully arranged songs. My beef with them is that they're generic at best. They're not catchy at all, and they sound like music you could hear in any indie game. It just doesn't sound Mario-ish, whereas Double Dash's soundtrack, while made up of simple MIDIs, has some of the catchiest music the franchise has had the grace to have. I can't even think of what 8's Mario Circuit song sounds like, while Double Dash's Mario Circuit's I'll never forget.

Battle Mode is an obvious win for Double Dash. It has the good, classic Balloon Battle, the amazing Shine Thief and the ridiculously fun Bob-Omb Blast, and some interesting battle courses. Wii's and 7's sucked and 8's I won't even comment. DS's was ok, though.

The item aspect was also very cool to me because of the special item thing, a unique feature to Double Dash. Unbalanced? Sure it is, but no Mario Kart game has ever been good at this.

BONUS: Mario Kart Double Dash has the most beautiful and balanced roster of the entire franchise. Relevant characters, a nice amount of them, no obscure characters, it was perfect. I just can't appreciate bullshit like Funky Kong and Honey Queen and the seven goddamn Koopalings, let alone Pink Gold Peach and Baby Rosalina.

So in summary, Double Dash did more to the franchise than any other game could, at least in my opinion. I really like Mario Kart Wii for what was mentioned above, it did introduce many features that I welcomed. Antigravity is barely noticeable and diving is just meh. Here's hoping Nintendo decides to make Mario Kart 9 be Double Dash 2 with improved controls and a better roster, and of course better tracks. Mario Kart 8 will go down for me as the most forgettable and null Mario Kart game ever.
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

Anser said:
Your opinion is fascinating because it states things that are nothing but the pure truth.

Heh, it's not the truth. It's just my opinion.

Anser said:
I I happen to think that Double Dash has many tracks that require a lot of skill, its Rainbow Road being the hardest Rainbow Road so far, at least for me. Wario Colosseum, DK Jungle, Bowser Castle, and Sherbet Land are not easy tracks.

The only reason I found any of those tracks difficult was in part because of the poor controls in Double Dash; furthermore, Rainbow Road's topology broke a bunch of homing items on top of the game's poor controls.

All of these tracks have been remastered in later games, unofficially and officially, and whenever they return, sure, their layout and hazards stay mostly the same but you notice how much easier it is mostly because of improved controls in physics. Some retro courses bloat the width of the course but I've played Wario Colosseum and Bowser's Castle as retro tracks in Mario Kart Wii, faithful game hacks of them, and I didn't find them difficult in Mario Kart Wii.

Anser said:
I don't really care about car variety because I just go for whatever looks cool. I never, ever look at stats. Sometimes you guys start talking about the data and tons of numbers here and I'm like "Ok, they're taking it way too far" but that's ok if you guys are into that.

I don't give a crap about stats either, I care about aesthetics like you. And I think Mario Kart 8 thoroughly delivers in terms of aesthetic variety, having karts like the GLA, P Wing, Sports Coupe, and Badwagon. Oh and there's bikes too, a nice touch as well.

Anser said:
BONUS: Mario Kart Double Dash has the most beautiful and balanced roster of the entire franchise. Relevant characters, a nice amount of them, no obscure characters, it was perfect. I just can't appreciate bull*bleep* like Funky Kong and Honey Queen and the seven goddang Koopalings, let alone Pink Gold Peach and Baby Rosalina.

Wow I cared about 8's roster so little mostly because of the two babies and my favorites that made it in that I forgot to mention that its roster is overall awful.

I still think Wii has overall a better roster than DD; we sacrificed Paratroopa and Petey Piranha for Funky Kong, Dry Bowser, Baby Peach, Baby Daisy, Rosalina, and Dry Bones. It's not that bad of a trade-off.

In Mario Kart 8, damn, all new Mario characters suck. I'm not happy that some veterans like Bowser Jr. and King Boo were forgoed in return of Koopalings, Pink Gold Peach, Baby Rosalina, Tanooki Mario, Cat Peach, and the return Dry Bowser. The Mario character picks in the DLC pack would have been the worst extra content I have ever seen if it weren't for the Mario Tennis Open Yoshis. The fact that they were about to put Kamek a second time in (he has his own kart emblem in MK8), good lord. Karma bites Kamek in the ass though, so I'm not too upset at that.
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

If there's one thing that Double Dash has that the others don't get anywhere near as good at is the Bob-mob battle mode.
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

Swiftie_Luma said:
i dont know.

I have a blast (lol) playing MK7 Bombs Only

The only problem with doing Bob-omb battles in Mario Kart 7 is that you can take damage from your own Bob-omb explosions. The Bob-omb Blast game mode gives you special Bob-ombs, where the explosions can only damage opposing racers.
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

First of all, I too consider Mario Kart: Double Dash!! to be the most polished (and best as well) Mario Kart game, considering when it was released, I even consider Mario Kart Wii to be better than Mario Kart 8, because it is more complete (it has battle arenas, a proper roster, victory ceremonies et al.), yet somehow I really cannot agree with some of your statements.

Anser said:
I kind of agree with the course design thing in terms of there not being too much variety, style-wise. I think that the award for the best track compilation goes to Mario Kart Wii, in terms of both difficulty and style. I happen to think that Double Dash has many tracks that require a lot of skill, its Rainbow Road being the hardest Rainbow Road so far, at least for me. Wario Colosseum, DK Jungle, Bowser Castle, and Sherbet Land are not easy tracks. In Mario Kart 8, I didn't find a single track that made me say "Wow, that was hard". All of them are boring and plain in terms of layout. The only thing they have going for them is that they're beautiful. That's all.
On paper, I think that Mario Kart Wii has a good selection, and ultimately no Mario Kart game has particularly bad tracks, Mario Kart Wii included. But really, when I played Luigi's Circuit in Mario kart Wii for the first time I had a true "ugh!" moment: everything was so underwelming, from the track layout (where are the double lanes of MK:DD? Or even just a glider section, or something that wasn't actually done in MK: DD but in a better way?) to the soundtrack which was neat, but too litlle, to the visuals. And in my opinion that wasn't the only case unfortunately, with Mario circuit being too similar to MK: DD one, DK summit having too many sections with plenty of snow that slowed you down for little reason other than "lol you have to go there just because" and Daisy Circuit offering little. There are interesting moments with Coconut Mall, Grumble Volcano and Koopa Cape and I still think that Maple Treeway is ultimately the most interesting track because it presents a unique theme which is both interesting to drive in and beautiful to look at, with an appropriate soundtrack. Not much to say about the retro tracks, I think the selection is still pretty good.

One thing I have to say about Mario Kart 8 is that it tends to be low on visible gimmicks, I'm referring mainly to Sweet Sweet Canyon that has little to back up the sweets theme and of course Rainbow Road that doesn't employ anti-gravity that much, considering that it is a space circuit. Also, the nitro tracks don't seem to have timed events, only cyclic events. That being said, it's obvious that 150cc is not very interesting, it can be done even with ridiculously low handling. But play 200cc and you'll see how much more interesting the tracks become, especially when you realize that all the previosuly irrelevant microjumps now can easily send you off-road. There you can see how the tracks make more sense in terms of layout, the fact that they had to increase speed by 50% and increase gravity in some areas means of course that something was well broken in the whole game, but we are now talking about the tracks. I admit that I have a very peculiar point of view on the matter, as using inside drifting bikes in 200cc the tracks becomes way more interesting, due to their lower angular velocity while drifting and their traction that makes everything more challenging and interesting to drive in. It's impressive to note how you have to keep track of both the turns and the traction in every single moment, forcing you to think and act before the difficult turns. Try to approach the slalom part of Mount Wario or the turns of Rainbow Road with an inside drifting bike to see what I mean, or even retro tracks such as Cheese Land (the first turn can screw you up serisouly if you don't use the right timing!), GCN Yoshi circuit (which is surprisingly funny in MK8, with the ddifferent pacing), that dreadfully difficult 3DS Neo Bowser City, even the previosuly very slow N64 Royal raceway has its surprises in 200cc. It feels more like a proper racing game, where turning and braking even require some planning.
Ignoring the tracks that have nothing to do with Mario Kart, the variety of themes is commendable too, with the return of ghost tracks in home console Mario Kart games (finally!), a track that starts underwater (Dolphin Shoals, pretty underrated in my opinion), a disco track (that was unexpected), the return of Sky Garden (gosh how much I like that track!), and even a wonderful track that allows you to explore a Shy Guy village on the trees and a Toad village below it (watch Ray Koopa streams to see how incredible that setting is!). Mount Wario is a very conving mountain track too, in my opinion. Among the retro tracks, I would like to mention how interesting is Ribbon Road, with a very unique theme never seen before. And oh, the tracks are connected like in MK: DD: in Super Bell Subway you can see the map of the city seen from N64 Rainbow Road, which contains Toad Harbor and has Moo Moo Meadows nearby. I even managed to find the Golden Bell (the name of the station of SBS) on N64 Rainbow Road, and indeed, a train stops there!

As a TL; DR, I would say that even though the nitro tracks have sometimes less visible gimmicks, the layout of the tracks in Mario Kart 8 200cc now makes sense, while the variety, the art direction and the amount of nice little touches in them is of course on another level, the latter of which is at least back to the MK: DD days.

Anser said:
The soundtrack in 8 SUCKS hard for me. I'm not going to lie, I don't like it in the slightest. Let me set this straight: none of the songs in Mario Kart 8 are bad. All of them are beautifully arranged songs. My beef with them is that they're generic at best. They're not catchy at all, and they sound like music you could hear in any indie game. It just doesn't sound Mario-ish, whereas Double Dash's soundtrack, while made up of simple MIDIs, has some of the catchiest music the franchise has had the grace to have. I can't even think of what 8's Mario Circuit song sounds like, while Double Dash's Mario Circuit's I'll never forget.
Sorry, but I think you're picking a well made jazzy arrangement of Mario Kart Stadium epic theme to state that mario Kart 8 soundtrack is generic. Ignoring Mario Kart Stadium, Cloudtop Cruise, Bowser's Castle, Wild Woods, Twisted Mansion, Shy Guy Falls, Dolphin Shoals. And I din't even cover in this list the wonderful rearrangements of some retro tracks. Jazz might not be your genre, but I wouldn't say that because of this MK8 soundtrack is generic, unMario-ish, indie-like themed. MK: DD was an interesting move forward at the time, and some tracks are catchy or nice. It has a nice Mario Circuit/Luigi Circuit/Yoshi Circuit theme, a nice Waluigi Stadium/Wario Colosseum theme, a nice Bowser's Castle theme and a beautiful Rainbow Road theme (apart from the linking part before the N64 part). You might even add Baby Park, it's a funny complement to the circuit, and the Mushroom Bridge theme as being nicer that the one used in Moonview Highway. The main theme is joyful as well. Still, there are not as many tracks, while Mario Kart 8 has a track for each course, with actual instruments playing some parts. Really, Wii Moo Moo Meadows, Dolphin Shoals, GBA Cheese Land, Cloudtop Cruise, Mario Kart Stadium and Shy Guy Falls are simply missing from MK: DD, there are no substitutes for them (I didn't mention Electrodrome as it is a pretty niche track, being disco music). MK8 however has MK: DD Mario Circuit theme, Dry Dry Desert, Sherbet Land and Baby Park theme, along with N64 Rainbow Road's theme, that made an important part of MK: DD beautiful Rainbow Road theme. Sorry, I simply cannot agree here, as I think the series made a huge step forward with Mario Kart 8 in terms of soundtrack.


Before I go to the obvious final point, let me talk about a peculiar aspect: physics. MK: DD not only had serious problems with traction, especially at low speed, go into a wall holding the acceleration button and see what happens. You just go on, there's no conservation of momentum at all, which also means you literally get stuck onto walls in turns, if you become perpendicular to them. The handling of collisions between vehicles was already very similar to how it is now, and maybe even the acceleration system is the same, but the other aspect are definitely different. You can even see how much speed you lose going airborne without boosts, to the point that going into wooden bridges gives you some serious problems. And the speed cap of 70 mph / 100 km/h could be reached with Mini-Turbos, even using the Toadette Kart.

Mario Kart Wii at least tries to do something better, but it's inconsistent and also enigmatic. Use the inside drifting bikes and see what happens: go into a wall and sometimes you will bounce normally, going with the right angle away from it, sometimes you will get stuck at the wall, sometimes you will be bounced toward the center of the track losing a lot of speed. Do a wheelie on a non-plain surface (Maple Treeway and the pipe section of Koopa Cape come to mind) and sometimes the bike will start going diagonally, climbing the inclined surface. But even when it works properly, the physics is odd: for example, while drifting with an inside drifting bike, you will immediately do a sharp turn after landing, then you will start turning according to the in-game drift stat, which is typically very low. If you do fast ramp tricks while shrunk, you'll see how strange the physics of jumps is, probably because much of it is scripted. There's still a speed cap, although at least it is at a more generous 120 km/h. It's a very welcome step forward and traction is handled in a better way, but I still think Mario Kart Wii's physics doesn't always work as intended, with the interaction with the environemnt being hit-and-miss, and the many glitch shortcuts suggest that too. Still miles ahead of MK64 unpredictable physics, of course.

Mario Kart 8 has actually two ways the physics engine works, similar but drastically different: that for outside drifting vehicles and that for inside drifting bike. The former seems to be borrowed from Mario Kart 7, the latter has parts of it done from scratch. There are huge rooms of improvements, especially in the handling of collisions between vehicles, that have only little improvements from what we saw in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! and are still based on 8-directions-collisions instead of conservation of momentum. And the outside drifting physics is outright broken in some aspects, with plenty of physics exploits.
But choose and inside drifting bike and try going into a wall. There will be some bugs (a bit rarer now), but most of the times you will find yourself going at the same angle with respect to the wall, like the conservation of momentum dictates. Does this create pinball moments? Yes it does, but we should not criticize an engine because it does its job, we should try to learn how to cope with it. While you go airborne, conservation of momentum tends to still be prevalent, with little room to change your line, which is not bad and can even be used to counter blue shells (you don't lose much momentum when you are hit while airborne). I recently won a race thanks to this principle.
Especially in 200cc, inside drifting finally works more like it works in real life, with the "drifting" actually beginning only when the driver is leaning. Interestingly, in some cases, especially U turns, I ended up using the same approaches of Moto GP races starting a drift early, going wide and straight before a turn, only to go sharp at the end. It's beautiful to see, it's great to play, especially because traction is starting to become really interesting and microjumps are important too, due to the conservation of momentum that I described before. When you start doing Bone Dry Dunes and GBA Cheese Land well, driving in Mario kart 8 200cc with an inside drifting bike really becomes interesting in and by itself, which is surprising.
No speed cap was found in Mario Kart 8, which is welcome although in this case the boosts themselves, especially the trick ones, do add very little, so it's still pretty slow when comapred to apst games, even thoguh its actual maximum speed might not be that slow (the base of 7.38 units/frame might really be 73.8 km/h, slightly slower than MKW 75 km/h, while the max is 8.45 units/frame, with MKW max beign around 86 km/h). I can see why they went with a 50% speed increase in 200cc.
Of course, the glider physics is simplified, and the exploits with outside drifting vehicles along with the vehicle collision system show that we are far from having a proper physics engine, but I'd say that this apsect is finally becoming at least interesting and driving in 200cc can be really enjoyable, even when there are not many gimmicks.

Anser said:
BONUS: Mario Kart Double Dash has the most beautiful and balanced roster of the entire franchise. Relevant characters, a nice amount of them, no obscure characters, it was perfect. I just can't appreciate bull*bleep* like Funky Kong and Honey Queen and the seven goddang Koopalings, let alone Pink Gold Peach and Baby Rosalina.

Baby Luigi said:
In Mario Kart 8, dang, all new Mario characters suck. I'm not happy that some veterans like Bowser Jr. and King Boo were forgoed in return of Koopalings, Pink Gold Peach, Baby Rosalina, Tanooki Mario, Cat Peach, and the return Dry Bowser. The Mario character picks in the DLC pack would have been the worst extra content I have ever seen if it weren't for the Mario Tennis Open Yoshis. The fact that they were about to put Kamek a second time in (he has his own kart emblem in MK8), good lord. Karma bites Kamek in the ass though, so I'm not too upset at that.
As much as I like the characters you mentioned (especially Bowser Jr.) and definteily am not fond of them being cut out and of the alternate version of existing characters (don't worry, I'm not against Baby Mario and Baby Luigi, those are also featured in other spin-off games and the first time they were introduced they weren't a common trend), you know my unpopular opinion on the matter: to me the Koopalings were the best addition of Mario Kart 8 and one of the best addition to the Mario Kart series. I'm really sad that compromises had to be made (I would have liked more an appraoch like that of Mario & Sonic, with the core roster untouched and a gradual addition of all of them, starting from a few ones) but in the end I am so glad to have them that I almost feel guilty when others complain about the lack of veterans in Mario Kart 8 roster, because I feel like Nintendo made me a really welcome present at the expense of other people's favorites.

In more objective terms, it's difficult to state which is the best, probably Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, having very few alternate version and the most meaningful ones (Baby Luigi and Baby Mario, Koopa Paratroopa), still has the best roster in relative terms, but Mario Kart Wii had a very good roster too (I still don't know why, but I think Bowser Jr. is more interesting in MK: DD, though, there's something off with him in MKW, as if he has less interesting voices and doesn't have particular tricks that stand out, unlike Yoshi on inside drifting bikes who is really awesome in Mario Kart Wii).

Finally, pretty irony: not counting alternate versions of characters (this includes the babies, the metal versions, Dry Bowser, Paratroopa and Dry Bones that in Mario Kart Wii has the same tricks as Koopa Troopa and thus likely the same animation set as him), this is the number of Mario characters in those three games:

Mario Kart: Double Dash!!: 17 characters
Mario Kart Wii: 18 characters
Mario Kart 8: 22 characters

I was pretty surprised to see that Mario Kart 8 still has many different characters from the Mario universe, to be honest.
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

Holy crap

Mario Kart 8 on NX showed King Boo and two Item slots.

This is big. Wii U ports with added content / backwards compatibility with added content for select games.
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

Are you sure that's Mario kart 8? I was under the impression this was a new game.
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
 
Re: Mario Kart 8

When I was ranting last night about Mario Kart 8, one of the things I forgot to mention was how much it bothered me to not have King Boo around anymore.

Then the Switch trailer comes out, and I saw him.

THEN I SAW TWO ITEMS PER KART.

And saw it's no Double Dash 2. Sigh...
 
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