We’ve all been there. You’re playing your favorite Mario Kart, cruising to a first-place victory after a cakewalk race when one little thing goes wrong and you’re suddenly staring down the barrel of a humiliating finish. This is the essence of getting Mario Karted, a term immortalized a decade ago and perfectly captured again like lightning in a bottle earlier this month.
“It was my first time taking the bridge route in Yoshi’s valley because I saw a few world record runs use that route and figured that would be the fastest,” Kyl, a fashion student in London, told Kotaku in a recent chat. “I didn’t think I would basically replicate the iconic DK mountain clip.”
He was referencing a now infamous video from 2014 by the YouTube channel HowBoutGaming titled “Get Mario Karted.” Daisy is riding across the final bridge on DK Mountain on her way to a first-place finish in Mario Kart Wii when she gets blue-shelled and smacked with items from numerous other opponents as they race by, eventually getting pushed off the side of the bridge multiple times. It now has over 5 million views.
The “Mario Karted” meme was born, with players sharing clips of similar debacles throughout the years since. Because the game tries to give people near last place stronger items, and because AI-controlled opponents will hold onto those items until they get close to you, it’s always courting catastrophe to mess up near the end of a race with everyone else still hot on your trail.
But Kyl was racing online against humans when he got absolutely demolished in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. “I never thought Peachette would be such a lightweight character,” he said. “It’s my first time playing her ever since she got released from the DLC expansion pack.” Unlike the notorious DK Mountain video, most of Kyl’s falls came from simply getting knocked off the bridge by heavier characters. He was playing with a randomizer that picks your kart loadout for you, and ended up with one of the lightest characters in one of the smallest vehicles.
“The match happened while I was watching the Olympics closing ceremony because it was so boring,” he said. “I usually get Mario Karted on purpose when I play with my friends. But playing online, this was deadly. I mean I’ve been blue-shelled before the finish line in first place but this was cruel. I haven’t played Mario Kart since that match.”
Kyl did upload the clip to Reddit, though, where it quickly went viral and got slingshotted around Twitter and the rest of social media. “All of that because you wanted to cross a bridge,” responded one commenter. Another was more helpful. “If you don’t go for the bridge in the future because of this incident, which I don’t recommend as the bridge is the fastest path, you should take a right turn next to the bridge,” they wrote. “6th place is decent considering what happened to you on the bridge. I’ve never seen someone getting comboed like that.”
My favorite thing about the clip from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the way it shows how the game has changed in the last decade. The original Mario Karted video shows a screen wipe when Daisy gets pulled back onto the track after falling into the ravine. Nintendo is much more generous these days, with Lakitu (the Koopa Troopa filming from the cloud) fishing players from the abyss almost instantly now. If anything, it makes the newest Mario Karted clip even funnier. I can’t wait to see how Nintendo handles this unique brand of humiliation in Mario Kart 9.