Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Tutorial
This guide is for the Nintendo Switch version, so I’m sorry if not all of it applies to the version that you have. Sorry for the lack of pictures, I tried to explain everything as clearly as I could without them.
Setting up the game
(If you’ve ever played the game before, this part won’t be helpful for you)
- Buy a copy of the game, unfortunately it’s not free. Either download it from the Nintendo eShop or buy a cartridge.
- Open the game and press the suggested buttons (left or right bumper) to start the game.
- You are given the option to make your own mii or select a preset for your account. This won’t strongly affect the game, but feel free to have fun creating a new one if you’d like.
Starting the Game
- You will be prompted upon opening the game to play in single player, multiplayer, online play, or wireless play. Most game advancement is accomplished through single player mode, so I will largely be discussing this mode.
- Single player features several different options as well, which are Grand Prix, Time Trials, VS Race, and Battle. Grand Prix is the standard version of the game, where you race against a plethora of NPCs to win first place. Time Trials are slightly different, in that you race either by yourself or by a ghost to finish a particular lap in the shortest amount of time. VS Race is similar to Grand Prix, however you get to customize the rules. Battle lets you drive around and work towards other goals than just finishing a lap as quickly as possible, such as coin runners, in which you try to collect the most coins from the track while avoiding traps that can make you lose them.
The Character and the Kart
Regardless of which game mode you choose, you will be prompted to choose a character and 3 different aspects of your kart. Each of these aspects will have a strong affect on gameplay.
Although there are a whole bunch of hidden statistics of your character/kart setup, the game will show you a set of 5, which are: speed, acceleration, weight, handling, and traction.
Speed: increasing this increases the top speed that you can drive at
Acceleration: increasing this decreases the amount of time needed to reach your top speed
Weight: increasing this will allow you to bump around characters that are lighter than you and will prevent other characters from bumping you around
Handling: increasing this makes your character more responsive to the controls and decreases your turning radius
Traction: increasing this allows you to drive off road faster and lessens your chance of slipping on slippery surfaces
When you’re selecting your kart, you can press the + or - buttons in order to get the detailed view of the statistics for your setup. If you’re new to the game, I would recommend choosing something with a high level of handling and acceleration, as it makes the character easier to control and accelerating helps you speed back up quickly.
The characters are loosely divided into three weight classes, light, medium, and heavy. Lighter characters tend to have higher acceleration and handling, whereas heavier characters tend to have a higher speed and always have a higher weight.
Your kart will be made up of a kart body, the wheels, and the glider, each of which have their own statistics that affect the statistics of the whole setup.
Unlockables
In the game, all of the characters are unlocked from the first time that you play the game. You can unlock Gold Mario by taking first place in every Grand Prix cup at the 200cc level, which I will get back to later. However, Gold Mario is just a skin replacement for the normal metal Mario.
You will unlock a new kart piece when you collect 30 coins (up to the first 500) or 50 coins from playing races. The exact parts are given in a random order.
You can also unlock the special gold kart by doing the following.
Gold Standard Kart: win every cup with at least one star on 150cc and mirror modes in Grand Prix.
Gold Tires: beat every staff ghost at 150cc in Time Trials
Gold Glider: collect 5,000 coins in total
Driving!
- You will be given three options to help with driving your kart. The first of these is Smart Steering, which will prevent you from going significantly off road. Tilt Controls will let you tilt your controllers to steer. Auto-accelerate is fairly self-explanatory, and will automatically accelerate your character.
- At the beginning of each level, Lakitu will appear and start a countdown from three. If you start your kart too early, you will get a penalty, but if you start it at the right time before the start of the match, you will get a starting boost.
- When driving, you will find coins on the track. You can collect up to 10 of them in Grand Prix, and having them provides a minor boost to your top speed.
- Item boxes appear on the course in specific spots. Each of the items inside has a slightly different effect, but they either serve to help you or hurt your opponents. The items dropped by these boxes will be better if more people are ahead of you to help balance the game.
- When you go around turns, you can hold down the right bumper to drift. Drifting will give you a mini-turbo boost when you stop doing it, the strength of which gets stronger the longer amount of time you drift for.
- When your character does a jump, make sure to do a trick. The key is the same as for drifting, and it will give you a mini-turbo boost when you land. Getting the timing of these right can be tricky, but you’ll get better with practice.
- Most tracks will have glowing orange sections on the ground. These are speed boosts, and will give you a boost when you drive over them.
- Glowing blue sections also appear on the ground, but these will change your kart into its antigravity form or back.
Grand Prix
- Before you can even choose your setup, you have to choose the cc you want to play at. The level that you choose will increase the base speed of everybody, and the ccs are listed in increasing order of difficulty. Mirror mode is at the same speed at 150cc, however all of the courses are backwards.
- Once you have chosen your setup, you will choose which cup you are playing, out of 12. Each cup is defined by a set of 12 races. Although some of the cups are undeniably harder than others, each course presents a different challenge level for everyone. For beginners, I would recommend the mushroom cup, since it has some of the most straightforward levels.
- Each race has 3 laps. For most courses, all three laps will be the same, however some courses have different laps each time.
- You are given a score based on your performance in each race, ranging from 15 points for first place to 1 point for twelfth place.
- At the end of four races, your total score will be tallied and your overall rank will be determined based on the sum of your scores. If your total score is high enough, you will also be awarded between 1 and 3 stars, based on the score.
Time Trials
- Choose your setup!
- Choose one particular track to race in. Unlike Grand Prix, Time Trials involves doing one track at a time.
- Time trials are done at either the 150cc or 200cc difficulty level, which can be chosen by pressing the x button after selecting a level but before starting it.
- You will be given two options for gameplay, which are “Solo Race” and “Race against Ghost.” If you choose “Solo Race,” you will just be racing against yourself to get the best time you can. If you choose “Race against Ghost,” a ghost version of another player will appear for you to compete against.
- In Time Trials, all item blocks are removed from the game and you start with 3 mushrooms. Mushrooms provide a speed boost when you use them. You can still collect coins on these levels, thankfully.
VS Race
This game mode is almost exactly like Grand Prix, however you get to change the rules as you see fit. You can choose from any of the difficulty settings, turn on or off teams, change the quality of items that appear, change the NPC difficulty and vehicle type, create custom cups, and change the amount of races in a cup.
Battle
Like in VS Race, Battle Mode gives you a whole bunch of customization options for your game. Battle Mode uses its own set of tracks and provides entirely different objectives, based on the game you choose.
Balloon Battle
In this game, everyone has balloons attached to their kart. Your goal is to be the last person standing, have the most balloons when the time runs out, or have those be true for your team.
Renegade Roundup
In this game, two teams are set up, each with six members. You will either be tasked with catching the renegades or to not get captured. The capturing team wins if all renegades are caught (as if any remain they could break each other out of jail), and the renegade team wins if time runs out.
Coin Runners
In this game, your goal is to collect the most coins from around the map.
Shine Thief
This game is a bit like capture the flag, where your goal is to hold onto the “shine” for a certain amount of time before anyone else beats you to it.
Tips & Tricks
- Avoid all of the course hazards, such as piranha plants.
- Make sure to trick and drift at the right times.
- Almost every level has one or more shortcuts that you can use. Some of these shortcuts require you to have a speed-boosting item to negate the off-road penalty, but in Time Trials the shortcuts are necessary to get a good score.
- Use your items! Some items are good for protection, but I’ve seen a lot of people just hoard their items unnecessarily. However, be careful with speed-boosting items, as they can just send you flying into the wall.
- Plenty of online guides break down the statistics for each kart piece and character, which can help you make the best setup for each level.
Have you ever played any Mario Kart game before? Have you played this particular version?
If you’ve played it before, do you like it?
If you haven’t do you think that you would?
