The 8 Stupidest Ways to Play 'Mario Kart 8' (Tested)

8 Instant Death Mode

The Rules:

In a Balloon Battle game, your character is given three balloons, and other players try to pop them with ridiculous weapons as you race around the track. In my version, however, the goal is to pop your own balloons as quickly as possible and lose the game ... in order to win. And to keep it interesting, all three balloons should be popped by your own hand. Get killed by someone else and you're dead. I mean, the wrong kind of dead. Not the fun one we're going for here.

Note: This mode should only be tried within Mario Kart 8. Do not attempt to die in real life. Or at least don't leave any evidence that you died after reading Cracked ... for instance, by tying a bunch of balloons to your car, sans parade and/or marriage.

The Test Drive:

Losing is actually kinda fun! My current record is about 20 seconds. I was lucky enough to get a Bob-omb, so for my first balloon I repeated a technique I've accidentally done a million times called "being a doofus":

For the other two, I just ran straight off a ledge as my baffled opponents circled around me, hopefully wondering when I was going to flip out and point my self-hate in their direction:

To make it even more fun, ask a friend to join you online so you can see who can lose the fastest. He'll say, "No, that's stupid," so keep insisting until he finally gets into a Balloon Battle with you. At this point you'll ask him for a time out because you have to go answer the door, and he'll use the opportunity to kill you and ruin your game.

You're a fucking asshole, Felipe.

7 One-Person Two-Player Mode

The Rules:

OK. OK. Hear me out. For this mode, you need to: 1) hold two controllers at once and 2) be a fucking idiot. Ready? Are you doing both things? Cool. You're ready to play with two characters at the same time. Make sure you're using motion controls, obviously, because trying to operate a joystick with each hand would make you look ridiculous. Playing with motion controls, on the other hand, always looks ridiculous, so there's no difference.

Now simply go into a VS Race, pick your characters, and find out which one of your hands is a better Mario Kart 8 player! Will your favorite hand (aka the one you use to wank) win the race?

The Test Drive:

I'm controlling Shy Guy and Toad here:

I realized partway through the first lap that it would be a good strategy to hold each controller with the hand corresponding to the side of my TV screen where that character appeared -- up till then, I was looking at Shy Guy on the left and trying to control him with the right hand, which for some reason wasn't giving such great results. So I switched hands, but I still didn't win the race.

That's the part where I got a message saying the race had ended because I (both of us) was too far behind. The worst part is that Toad lost, and he was my favorite. And now you know which hand I use to wank, so I think we all lost here.

6 Sightseeing Mode

The Rules:

Mario Kart 8 has an insane amount of impressively animated, lovingly crafted background details that no one will ever see because we're all too busy trying to kill each other with turtle shells at high speeds. So for this mode, we're gonna fix that. Step one: Go into a VS Race and move very slowly by repeatedly pressing the accelerator button instead of holding it down. Like this:

Step two: Enjoy the scenery. Oddly enough, in most tracks you should have just enough time to complete exactly one lap at this speed before the race is over for everyone else, as long as you don't get repeatedly bumped off a ledge by the other racers. It's like Nintendo wanted someone to try this!

The Test Drive:

Or not, because I found out pretty fast (OK, more like "at a perfectly sensible speed") that if you stand still for too long to bask in the glory of Nintendo's work, you'll get booted off from online races for being a troll. The best way to go sightseeing without having to deal with oppressive time limits and asshole drivers is to do it in Time Trial mode. Here are some photos I snapped that way:

5 Backward Mode

The Rules:

For this mode, go into a VS Race and -- pay attention to this part, because this is where it gets tricky -- move backward instead of forward. As in, you know the direction in which you usually move? Well, buddy, it's time to go in the other one.

Then do that for the rest of the race. PRO TIP: If you manage to contort your fingers in such a way that you can press the rearview mirror button at the same time as the reverse/brake one, you'll get an inverted view of the track and it'll be slightly less infuriating to maneuver your kart.

The Test Drive:

It turns out that you also get booted from races for doing this. That's got to be a glitch. However, you can still do it in online Balloon Battles, but due to another unfortunate flaw in the design of this game (or the human body, I'm not sure), you can't press reverse and the rearview mirror and use items all at the same time, so you'll probably get your ass handed to you by the other players.

Also, if you thought avoiding all the big vehicles in Toad Turnpike was already annoying, get prepared to rage even more:

But other than all of that, this was tons of fun. I'm convinced I'm onto something with this one. Nintendo should put some variation of my idea in the next game -- they could call it Mirror Mode or something. Just a little suggestion for you, Nintendo.

4 Honk Battle Mode

The Rules:

One of the many upgrades Mario Kart 8 offers in relation to the older entries in the franchise is that you can now honk your kart's horn, because apparently the developers expected heavy traffic congestion to form across Rainbow Road on a regular basis. It's a pretty useless feature, but thankfully, my Horn Battle idea is designed to redeem it.

How do you join a Horn Battle? Simply go into a Balloon Battle game, start pressing the honk button, and never stop until everyone else is dead.

The Test Drive:

There are two important things I realized as soon as the game started: First, when you honk, all the characters around you jump a little in their seats like you just startled them, so when you honk all the time, they're constantly looking at you while lifting their butts, as if you're the one who caused their hemorrhoids.

And second, the honk button is the same as the item button, meaning that my character would automatically throw every item he had as soon as he got it ... which actually worked out pretty well for me:

Naturally, I ended up randomly hitting myself with shells, too, but I still came out second, despite having no idea what the fuck I was doing, so I'm gonna count this Honk Battle a victory.

3 Coin Completionist Mode

The Rules:

Get all the coins on a track. All the dang coins. What's that, hot shot? Oh, you already do that? Ha. No, you don't. You think you do, but there are always some coins you missed. This is a universal fact. Running a lap without missing any of them is harder than you think.

The best way to do this is by starting a Time Trial, since that's the only mode where the coins don't respawn after you (raise? collect? What's the proper term? Gonna ask the Internet) eat them. Plus, this way you can post your final time to the leaderboard and compete with players from around the world to see who's faster at gulping down coins! So far, no one has beaten my times ...

The Test Drive:

... because no one else is playing my stupid made-up mode, despite my best efforts to goad people into trying it. Also, by "my times," I mean my coin-getting times specifically, because everyone has beaten my general track completion ones.

Also also, I sort of cheated here, because a whole bunch of stages have clusters of coins magically floating in the air and it's pretty much impossible to get all of them.

2 Daredevil Mode

The Rules:

Play with your eyes closed. Just ... just play with your eyes closed, guided by nothing but the sound of the game and your instincts, like Ben Affleck in Daredevil. Hence the name of the mode. Or if, like Ben Affleck in Armageddon, you don't wanna close your eyes, you can turn off your TV and hook up the audio elsewhere. Alternatively, you can be naturally blind and play the game normally, I guess.

The Test Drive:

I actually started pretty well, but then a dude playing as Rosalina (it's always dudes playing as Rosalina) bumped me off course and I spent the rest of the race accelerating against the rail on the side of the road, convinced I was doing awesomely. Here's the full video for this one:

1 "Fuck That Guy" Mode

The Rules:

There's a lot of hostility going around in Mario Kart games: Everyone's always throwing fruits and dead turtle parts at each other, like a riot in a public zoo. A public zoo with bombs. "Fuck That Guy" Mode attempts to make the game more pleasant for most of the players by focusing all the aggression on a single target. You're only allowed to attack one fellow player in your group, so make sure to choose your opponent very carefully.

In my case, there was a guy in my online room called ProfLargeDick who hit me with a red shell once, so I skipped the careful deliberation and went straight for him.

The Test Drive:

My first round against Professor Large-Dick had some difficulties, since all I got was mushrooms, and that's like the one item you can't use to hit other people. I did my best with the tools at my disposal, but ultimately Large-Dick emerged victorious.

I had all but given up on the validity of the "Fuck That Guy" Mode when, during the last stretch of our final race, I got the coveted fireballs. I actually let myself fall back in the race just so I could let him pass me and do this:

It worked better than I thought -- my last fireball happened to hit Large-Dick as he was jumping over the water, causing him to fall down and have to suffer the indignity of being fished out by a turtle piloting a cloud. Professor Large-Dick got what he deserved for being called that, and came in ninth. I came in 10th for being a moron who slowed down to fight with an Internet stranger, but still, I take solace in knowing that at least I probably have a larger pe- shit.

Maxwell Yezpitelok has a free comic you can read and a Twitter you can follow.