Road To Nintendo Switch 2: 'Mario Kart 8 Deluxe'

I’m mostly joking—I don’t have any actual haters, unless you count the occasional Reddit dogpile. Those people hate everything, though. I digress.

What is this Road to Nintendo Switch 2 series, you ask? Well, I’m basically attempting to catch up on legacy Switch games I haven’t played or haven’t finished, or both, before the upgraded Switch 2 arrives on June 5. I’m going to play as many backlog gems as I can, although I realize time is quickly running out. One must imagine Sisyphus happy and all that.

So far, we’ve covered Super Mario World 3D Bowser’s Fury, Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD. I’m sticking largely to first-party titles, which shouldn’t be a surprise, because that’s where the magic truly resides on any Nintendo console. Yeah, the third-party stuff exists, and will be much more present on the Switch 2 (Cyberpunk 2077!), if reports are any indication. Still, was anybody playing Resident Evil 2 on the N64? Be honest.

Today, we’re drifting into the kart racer that just wouldn’t (and won’t) quit, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. It’s another game that Nintendo brought over to the Switch from older hardware, and I’m starting to notice a bit of a trend here. Where would the legacy Switch be without all these remasters? I guess there just weren’t enough original, first-party titles to completely fill out the Switch lineup. Sony and PlayStation are just as guilty, but regardless, I’m going to dive into the Days Gone remaster soon, like the utter chump I am. It was only $10 to upgrade, he said forlornly.

Vanilla Mario Kart 8 released on the Wii U back in 2014, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is basically the ultimate version of that game, complete with tons of DLC and a still-active online community. This article is rather timely, it turns out, since the Switch 2 enters the world soon with—and no pun intended—Mario Kart World, a brand new, race-anywhere successor to the aging Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which released over eight years ago in 2017. We’re due for a substantial overhaul, to say the least.

I actually played quite a bit of Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U, believe it or not, but never dove into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe until I was prepping for this article. Granted, I’m getting old, so I was there when the original Mario Kart hit the SNES, and I could never get enough, especially when it came to Battle Mode. That music is burned into my brain, and luckily, some of it makes an appearance in Deluxe.

I also played a ton of Mario Kart 64 with friends and family and dabbled in the GBA, GCN, DS and 3DS versions. One of the cool things about Deluxe is its constant homage to past titles; many of the tracks here are plucked from the retro games I just mentioned, and they’re plus’d with better graphics for modern audiences.

There are plenty of new tracks, too. Some of my favorites are the Excitebike Arena (a 3D pixel rendition of the classic NES game), Wild Woods (a treehouse ode to the Pacific Northwest, complete with a Goonies-esque waterslide) and Shy Guy Falls (a vertical, South American tepui-inspired waterfall track, complete with Sun Pitcher carnivorous plants). The imagination and attention to detail in these tracks are downright amazing, and they’re filled with plenty of shortcuts to discover. I haven’t tried the DLC tracks just yet, so that will have to wait for another article.

The gameplay here is traditional frantic Mario Kart stuff, and it’s excellent beyond measure. The graphics are great, too, even by 2025 standards. The weird thing about Nintendo games is that they age very gracefully, probably because they’re not trying to be photo realistic or cutting-edge. They’re more focused on clean design and memorable aesthetics, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe delivers the goods in spades. I’m sure Deluxe will look dated next to Mario Kart World come June 5, but as it stands, the visuals are sublime.

The controls are sublime as well, especially on the Pro controller, although I will say I made my way through both the 50cc and 100cc Grand Prix circuits without realizing Smart Steering was on by default. This meant I couldn’t access any of the course shortcuts, and I was baffled until I finally discovered a simple toggle in the options menu.

The game just begs you to play it, sort of like Super Mario Odyssey, but it can be incredibly frustrating at the higher solo levels. There’s always that rogue Blue Shell, destroying you mere inches before the finish line, of course when you’ve been in first place the entire race. You’ll still have fun, even when you’re losing, however. But seriously, how can a shell hit me when I’m literally flying? Ridiculous.

Online play can be frustrating too, but that feels more fair, because you know you’re competing against actual humans. One of the actual humans I raced against recently was someone from Canada who went by the name ‘beefy fart’ and I must have laughed at that handle for a good five minutes. A man of class, I see.

There are a surprising amount of people still playing Deluxe online and I never had trouble finding an active game. If you go online, be prepared to get humbled in a huge way, though. Even more so than when racing against the cheap AI single-player racers.

I believe the only thing Deluxe is missing is an open-world adventure mode, like Diddy Kong Racing, but that’s obviously being addressed in the upcoming Mario Kart World. I’ll also add that I still prefer Crash Team Racing’s boost mechanic over what’s presented here, and don’t tell anyone, but I might also prefer the characters, too. At least Deluxe has different kinds of vehicles, even if they’re not as varied as Rare’s N64 monkey masterpiece.

It’s a real testament to Nintendo’s design philosophy that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe remains so compulsively playable all these years after its initial release, and it’ll be interesting to see how it measures up to the expansive World iteration in another month. I do wonder what will become of the Deluxe online community once World hits alongside the Switch 2, and how long Nintendo will keep the servers running.

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. The fourth entry in my Road to Nintendo Switch 2 series, and the next article I’ve got planned is a cool one. Make sure to both inhale and exhale (deeply) as you wait for publication…

Disclosure: Nintendo provided a review code for coverage purposes.

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