Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has, after six years, finally removed a feature that, while good intentioned, could be exploited to give players a distinct advantage.
Unofficially known as “bagging,” players were able to deliberately hang back and collect powerful items, in turn using them to power through or annihilate other racers. The reason this strategy worked was that, in order to give people a sporting chance, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s item pickups weren’t entirely random.
Instead, some power-ups would only show up if the person picking them up was towards the back of the pack. Now, as spotted by Twitter user Bear (thanks, Games Radar), the latest patch shakes things up so that bagging is no longer a valid strategy.
“Made it so that you can’t acquire strong items when taking an Item Box by stopping or driving in reverse, or taking an Item Box that is in same location multiple times during a race,” read the game’s patch notes.
Related: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass Wave 6 Trailer Reveals New Characters, Tracks
In other words, Nintendo has noticed this was happening and they’ve decided to squash this. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe launched on the Switch in 2017, but the issue was in the series at least as far as back as Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U, released nearly ten years ago.
We can see why this could wind some players up but it’s not the worst race-game “feature” we’ve encountered. It’s more carefully managed these days, but a lot of racers featured blatant, blatant rubber-banding, especially in single-player mode.
Games would teleport cars forward, or given them an unfair speed advantage, just so players had someone nipping at their heels. And sometimes, it was infuriatingly obvious. Bagging isn’t quite inthe same league, so we’d expect its nerfing to be the subject of some discussion. But it’s extremely unlikely Nintendo are going to dial it back up to its former state.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s new patch also adds in its sixth and final wave of its Booster Course Pass content, with eight courses and four characters. Mario Kart 9 hasn’t been announced but chances are Nintendo will hold it back for Switch 2 or whatever their next console happens to be called.
