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Japanese gamers share their most memorable Mario Kart moments

Philip Kendall Nov 19, 2014
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Mario Kart. We don’t know a single person who claims not to like it at least a little bit, and with its 22-year history and eight (11 if you count the arcade iterations) distinct outings to date, pretty much everyone has zipped around at least one of Nintendo’s crazy cartoony tracks at some point in their life.

News site MyNavi Woman recently polled gamers all over Japan about their most memorable Mario Kart experiences, 13 of which we’ve listed after the jump for your reading and reminiscing pleasure. Honestly, we don’t think there’s a single one here that didn’t have us nodding in agreement.

Tell us, dear Rocketeers, how many of these Mario Kart moments ring a bell?

– Taking yourself out with a green shell

Nothing says “karma” quite like hurling a green shell at an enemy player, only for it to miss, ricochet off a wall and come back to smack you right in your stupid face. Violence, boys and girls, solves nothing.

– Leaning while taking the on-screen corners

Veteran players tend not to do this so much, but leaning into curves with your entire body is something that pretty much everyone does at some point in their gaming career. And in a weird way, it almost feels like it works…

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– Intentionally dropping back a few places but still getting junk from the item boxes

Mario Kart is designed so that the players at the back of the pack get better weapon items than those at the front, thus giving the slow-coaches and less skilled players a chance to catch up. Knowing this, some players intentionally drop back a couple of positions on the sections of track just before the item boxes in an attempt to trick the game into giving them better stuff. The code is not to be deceived, though, and doing this will all too often mean not only handing first place to another player, but getting little more than a banana peel or a single green shell as your reward for doing so.

– Coming to a complete stop inches before the finish line, because you can

Ah, the ultimate Mario Kart troll move. Nothing rubs your win in your friends’ faces more than when you’re so far in the lead that you’re able to slam on the brakes just before the finish line, wait a few seconds and then crawl over it at a snail’s pace, or even better, turn your kart around and reverse over the line an inch at a time. “See this? This is how much I’m beating you. Do you see? I am literally going as slowly as I possibly can. Trololol”

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– When taking a shortcut backfires horribly

We’ve all been there: thinking that you’ve discovered some crafty way to get ahead, you use a mushroom boost to zip over the rough or use a ramp to hop over the barrier and skip a whole section of the track, only to see your rank plummet from first to eighth as you run out of juice half way across the bumpy terrain or misjudge your jump and fall to your doom. Serves you right for being a smart-arse.

– Getting nothing but banana peels

We’re sure Nintendo has spent hundreds of hours tweaking and thinking about how items are distributed in Mario Kart, but sometimes it feels like the sky gods (Lakitu?) really have it in for you when, regardless of your rank in the race, you get nothing but banana peels again, and again, and again, and again…

▼ “Me agaaain!”

Mario Kart net

– Slipping on your own banana peel

And then, when you decide to get creative with the many bananas life keeps giving you, you end up taking yourself out with one.

“I know,” you chuckle to yourself, “I’ll drop this just behind the row of item boxes. Someone’s bound to slip on it!” only to somehow end up skidding on it yourself and then having to pretend to your friends that you have no idea where it came from.

– Messing up the rocket start

Rocket starts–when you hold the accelerator from just the right second to get a powerful boost from the start line–are a must for time trial enthusiasts and competitive racers alike. But even when you think you’ve got it down to a T, there are times when you’ll overshoot and end up sitting on your mark choking on a cloud of dust as your wheels spin uncontrollably and everyone else vanishes into the distance.

– Blowing yourself up with a bomb

They don’t drop all that often, but when they do appear in your item box, a bob-omb is a glorious sight to behold. Powerful enough to take out multiple racers in one blast and relatively easy to aim, players feels wonderfully powerful with one of these bad boys in hand. Until, of course, you somehow manage to blow yourself up with it…

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– Getting car-sick while playing

This might seem like an odd one to anyone who grew up playing video games, but I can distinctly remember feeling a little woozy after watching my sister’s boyfriend tearing around Mario Circuit 1 on the very first Super Mario Kart back when I was a kid. Those futuristic Mode 7 graphics, man…

– Getting three red shells and feeling invincible

As anyone who has played Mario Kart a lot will tell you, even with three red shells orbiting your kart, simultaneously forming a protective barrier while giving you enemy-seeking projectiles to use at your will, the triple-shell item doesn’t guarantee your safety. Even so, getting one does feel tremendously satisfying, and the temptation to unload all three shells on the one same player in quick succession is too much for some to resist, resulting in some wonderfully heated arguments between even the closest of friends.

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– When you slip off the edge of a cliff and you know it’s all over

You know how it is: you’re power sliding, boosting, getting all the good items and making incredible time. Then, as you try to take a particularly sharp corner while working up a turbo boost from your drift, scale-tailed Bowser or chunky monkey Donkey Kong knocks you off the edge of the track. Fishing rod-toting Lakitu is always there to catch you and put you back on the track, but the second you tip over that edge you know it’s all over, and your thumb instinctively moves towards the pause button so that you can either rage-quit completely or start your run again.

– Falling off the edge of the Rainbow Road

Speaking of falling… Rainbow Road, the final track in every Mario Kart game to date, has broken the spirit of many a racer with its combination of lethal bends, awkward jumps and open, barrier-less edges that almost seem to pull you towards them. Getting around any of Rainbow Road’s many incarnations without falling off at least once is an admirable achievement, and it’s little wonder that Japanese gamers bitterly recalled slipping off the edge of this psychedelic roller coaster of a track so often.

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There are of course many other memorable moments from the Mario Kart series (that damn blue shell, am I right guys?) besides those mentioned by MyNavi Woman’s readers, so feel free to share your own in the comments section below!

Source: Niconico News
Feature image via MMGM