Mario Kart 8 has been out for nine years now if you include the Wii U version. Despite the Switch port continuing to sell insane numbers since it came out in 2017, many people believed that a new installment was way past due. When the Booster Course Pass was announced instead, it was a bit controversial, with one side of people stating that it was time for a new game, and the other side believing that this was the best course of action and that there’s nothing else Nintendo can do to innovate the franchise.
RELATED:Mario Kart: Best Items, Ranked
But with the Booster Course Pass nearing its end, it’s a good time to ask: where does the series go from here?
This puts it in a similar situation asSuper Smash Bros. Ultimate. The platform fighter is also rich in content that seemingly doesn’t leave a lot of room for improvement in the next title. However,Smash Ultimate isn’t perfect, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe isn’t any different (nor is any game, truly).
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has a few issues. As the Booster Course Pass continues to unfold, it’s slowly addressing a few of those concerns, one of them being the redundancy of the overall roster andmissing fan favorite racers possibly returning. However, there’s one area where the game falls a bit short that the Booster Course Pass can’t fix, which is the antigravity gimmick.
The way that Mario Kart 8’s antigravity works is that the wheels of the racers' vehicles transform to stick to the road as it turns sideways, flips upside-down, or becomes dramatically steep. When you bump into another racer on these surfaces, you’ll gain a boost in speed after doing a quick spin. These surfaces sometimes have poles that boost you by bumping into them as well.
The antigravity allowed Nintendo to create unique and interesting maps. One of the best maps that takes advantage of it is Electrodrome, letting you view others racing upside-down above you when you take the opposite path from them. Shy Guy Falls also shows it off pretty well by allowing you to race against the torrent of a waterfall with accompanying speed boosters. It’s great when tracks use the gimmick to give you a sense and feel of defying gravity by having things around you flip and turn on their heads.
Mechanically, however, the gimmick makes little to no difference, and doesn’t meaningfully change how you go about racing when it comes into play. The only change is that you can bump into others for boosting, which is devoid of strategy since there’s never a reason tonotdo it outside of getting an item. It’s arguably less strategic than racing normally since it takes away the advantages and disadvantages of weight, which affects how far you move when bumped by another racer.
There’s also the fact that, despite this game being the introduction to antigravity, not all of the tracks use it. Whether they were present in previous Mario Karts or are new to Mario Kart 8, there are a number of maps where the gimmick is just absent for no reason. It really drags down a few maps because some would be considerably improved with them, like the Animal Crossing map that changes seasons but has the same layout, or Excitebike Arena which has four different randomized sections, but still manages to be an uninteresting track.
RELATED:Best N64 Racing Games, Ranked
Let’s look back at a gimmick that reallyworked: the racer pairings in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! You could pair two of the 20 characters and have them race together on one kart. Being that this was the game that introduced double item boxes as well, you had the ability to switch characters mid-race which could swap out the item you’d use. With it also came special items that only specific pairs could pull from item boxes, like Baby Mario and Luigi’s Chain Chomp, Bowser and Bowser Jr.’s Bowser Shell, and Peach and Daisy’s Heart Shield. These special items added a deeper layer of strategy that made your character choices matter even more, which is something that’s been lacking in every Mario Kart game since. It’s why Mario Kart: Double Dash!! is right under Mario Kart 8 Deluxe as the second-best Mario Kart (click hereto see where we rank all the Mario Kart games).
This isn’t to say that antigravity is a bad or pointless feature, as it provides some of the best tracks in the series. It’s something that should stick around for future titles, like the customizable kart parts from Mario Kart 7. But it’s just not enough for Mario Kart 8 to really stand out, with the sheer amount of content doing the heavy lifting.
The next Mario Kart game doesn’t need to reintroduce Double Dash!!’s features (much though I’d welcome it). A gimmick that could be consistently enjoyed throughout the game, while also being something that has a meaningful impact on how you go about racing, can make the next Mario Kart something really special. Whether Nintendo delivers us that, or just a Booster Course Pass Volume 2, remains to be seen.
