Sign up to Milanote for free with no time limit: https://milanote.com/designdoc0723
Mario Kart is one of the most beloved game series around. It pioneered a whole subgenre thanks to its item design. The series has had 30 years of little tweaks to its item system that have added up to big changes. Let’s take a tour of the 8 mainline Mario Kart games, look at their item design, and see how Nintendo has made something both accessible and timeless.
Featuring:
Super Mario Kart
Mario Kart 64
Mario Kart: Super Circuit
Mario Kart Double Dash!!!
Mario Kart DS
Mario Kart Wii
Mario Kart 7
Mario Kart 8 and 8 Deluxe
There are a billion items in some of the arcade games, maybe that’ll be a future episode.
Patrons get ad-free episodes early, plus access to our behind-the-scenes podcast.
Support Design Doc on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/designdoc
Design Doc on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Warbot400
#gamedesign #mariokart8deluxe #supermariokart
source
41:00 King boo is just like King bowser. Like Bowser he has his own minions that resemble him (Bowser has koopa's.) So the whole ordeal of that king boo is just a boo doesn't really make sense to me. The boo item is just the same thing as a blue, green or red shell
the blooper in 8 also gives everyone a slight speed boost! it just decreases traction which is really bad
I am glad to hear another person complain about the blooper. Though I personnally think that the reason it is trash is because it is fundamentally going against the philosophy of MK's items : as it is more effective on new player than on more seasoned one, thus the item loses effectiveness with more play time. The items in Mario Kart were always meant to reduce the gap between players, but the blooper doesn't and thus when used by the players feels… useless. It is fundamentally flawed and would need a total rework to become usefull and actually wanted.
Hot take: Blooper in MK8 is actually not terrible. The ink blocking your screen still makes next to no difference, but the increased slipperyness when turning can make a huge difference on bendier tracks and on higher ccs, where drifting on turns is already super tight and a bit more slipperyness can send you careening into the off-road or off the track. It legitimately becomes one of the best items when racing on SNES Rainbow Road and Neo-Bowser City with 200cc, especially if you’re using an outside-drifting kart, which is more prone to the effect. If it wasn’t for the opportunity cost of being an ~8th place item, and if it wasn’t so easy to remove, it would be an above-average item imo. As it is now, it’s still ok but hard to see the overall slowing effect the slippery drifting creates due to it being a global item
I wish the blue shell evolved to do more then hurt the person who got it and the person in 1st.
When you get a Blue to use a mushroom would help you more, a banana peel would, anything would help you more. If the blue shell spun out everyone in front of you and only exploded on 1st it would be useful.
24:58 hi, im the weirdo that did this a lot when i played this game. It honestly gives you a competitive advantage cause you can eyeball all of the other players' items, it also helps with lining up your shots without having to look back and not see where youre going
Blooper in 8 is more powerful than you'd think,it reduces traction and this is very powerful on high skill lobbies, as it makes you skid off good lines and screw up your flow
you’ve missed the mark in one spot. the red shells. my expertise is limited, but comparing red shells in double dash to 8 deluxe is like night and day
talk about tour coward
i know tour is considered a downgrade to online nerds but aren't all portable games like that? it introduced so many things to the series that are worth talking about stop pretending its doesn't
tour = mk9
Let’s talk about the blooper.
(Funny, the blooper ink kinda scared me when I was a wee lad back then.)
So, I heard the blooper in 2-player gets a buff, since it covers up 75% of the vertical screen. It’s not horizontal. Also, the DS version also had the characters swerving after the blooper. But I wonder…what can make it better?
Blooper is the 2nd worst item, first is the green shell imo, but I see it’s potential for major changes. Keep the ink screen, but make the kart/bike slippery. We need it to also have more blots to cover the screen up like they did in MKWii. Blooper shall also be invulnerable to the super horn like in 8, just to make it more effective. The only way to get rid of a blooper, you know how. 1, use my pet Doug to eat the Squidward because he loves sushi (talking about the Piranha Plant), or 2, use the mushroom to get rid of the ink. A dip underwater can also help, along with the Blooper being able to be destroyed by the blue shell. We also need the Bloop-Scoop to…be less toned, like in MK8 and 8 Deluxe, because in Wii, DS, and 7, that dude just appears everywhere, whereas in 8, he’s kinda rare.
One more thing. If the Boo and Blooper come at the same time, the Blooper should be taken by the Boo instead of your current item, just for a small mistake, letting the Boo user get inked. It seems unlikely, but would be pretty funny. Did I also mention that it needs poison controls? In some occasions, if you’re underwater, the Blooper should reverse your controls.
All this seems unlikely, but I would like it for the next Mario Kart. It’s a bad weapon, but it’s also pretty adorable to see the Blooper dancing around you. G'day, M8s.
Please do the other Mario kart games that totally don’t exist
17:04 Hehe 😈 chuckling
I would say what differentiates a kart racer from an arcade racer are the literal karts they are driving.
please talk about mario kart tour <3
Here’s a fun item idea: Cappy
You throw him forward and whoever he hits, you possess their kart for 5 seconds. After time’s up, you pop in front of them. You could use this to sabotage someone and drive them off a cliff. Bht you would have to be careful to time it right so you don’t fall off with them.
Mario Kart Tour when?!?! 👀
Loved the video btw!! 😊
I'm sorry are we just gonna ignore 22:57 which has the coolest banana snipe I've ever seen in my life
What I like/hate about green shells is their unpredictability,landing a hit with one is satisfying yes,but miss and you're more likely to be clipped by your own shell.
Triple greens are fun to spam,the chaos is threatening when you got 3 shells going all over the place. 😂
39:13 redlettermedia fan?
When MK Tour came out, swear everyone was talking about it in school. During breakfast many of us played it. But i quickly came to dislike the game. Especially now, just imagine having to get all those charecters to be able to get the point bonuses
"It's not hard to keep driving without seeing for a few seconds"
– Design Doc, 2023
pssst…
MKGP and GPDX are fairly playable on emulator…
🤖 🦜
I think they should make it so the red shells are somewhat possible to avoid, not impossible like in 8, but at the same time, not hilariously pathetic like in Wii. It would add an interesting sense of skill to avoiding them.
I'd like a mariokart where instead of customising your vehicle you customise your 'item deck' – then again I suspect everyone would immediately vet the blooper out of their deck ;D
I might be in the minority here but I have always disliked the change Mario Kart 8 made to the item system. Making it based on distance from 1st, rather than on placement, takes out a lot of the strategy in favor of just creating a chaotic mess that makes it near impossible to actually play thoughtfully in a middle position. In Mario Kart Wii, for example, you can purposefully drop back into, say, 9th place, where you have a better chance for a Golden Mushroom. Then you can use that on an upcoming part of the track where there’s a lot of off-road. In Mario Kart 8, you can’t do that. If 1st place is super far ahead, it doesn’t matter what place you’re in, everyone is going to pull that Golden Mushroom, take the shortcut, and despite pulling off a potentially difficult maneuver to get ahead, you’re in the exact same position as before. Sure, you might be closer to 1st, but you’re also just as close to last place as you were before. There’s no room for item strategy, it’s just about hoping you get something good for the part of the track you’re at. Also, god forbid you pull something like triple shells, because they’re going to be literally useless since all 9 racers around you all have stars, bullet bills, etc. and are completely invulnerable.
Basically, we went from a system where you could strategically aim for specific positions to give you the advantage moment-to-moment (playing thoughtfully and purposefully), to the MOST chaotic experience the series has ever had, where everyone has OP items all at once, you can’t predict at all what you’re going to get, and it becomes a mad dash for 1st place and 1st place only. That sounds obvious (of course you’d want to get 1st place), but sometimes being able to set aside 1st as a lost cause and instead focus on 2nd or 3rd can make the gameplay SO much more engaging and interesting, especially if you’re playing something like a clan war where you want specific items that will benefit your team and hurt the other one.
I still do have plenty of fun with Mario Kart 8/Deluxe, don’t get me wrong, but the way the items are given based on distance from 1st place often turns races into a mindless, chaotic mess of bright colors and noises, items everywhere and no room to use them strategically.
Watching all those blue shells was giving me anxiety and rage. Lol
(sudden anxiety): i actually like both the DS games…
Another reason why I think the fake item boxes have become redundant other than the fact that they obviously look different to normal item boxes is the placement. Throwing a FIB doesn't really make sense because boxes tend to be in a symmetrical line/pattern, and a lonely FIB in a chaotic spot stands out like a sore thumb. If FIBS automatically aligned themselves to an existing box line it would be more believable.
There is a way to play some of the Arcade games on a Wii
I had my ds top screen broken for about a year and I got extremely good at mario kart with only half of the top part and using the map
One other weird thing regarding Mario Kart DS and items: item luck was a kart stat. It also changed how many mushrooms you got in Time Trial. Intriguing idea, but with the least item chaos to begin with, that very much pushed me to the low-luck Poltergust 3000 kart.
Bloopers in MKDS are really effective against AI opponents as they slow down significantly.
There were a couple of places where your research ran up short. The blue shells in MKDS can be escaped. Just use a mushroom or, if you're very good, a powerslide boost to dodge it at the right timing.
Fun fact
One time
The upper DS screen broke
And I played Mario Kart Ds with only the lower screen for a long time