Do you know that you can beat yourself up with a Blue Shell Mario Kart 8 Deluxe? Speedrunners do it, and they go out of their way to inflate themselves with the first place target item as quickly as possible.
Skilloz, the current world record holder for the hilarious name “Blue Yourself” category, uploaded a video yesterday (h / t Polygon) which shows that it is possible to turn from the start of the race to a Blue Shell explosion in just under 38 seconds. If you’re a fan of Baby Daisy – there should be at least one of you – you might want to check it out.
Here’s how Skilloz did it, according to the man himself:
The items you get depend on how far you are from the first place. Because I know this, I had a sandbag at the beginning to get a good chance of getting a star. Then I rush to the next set of articles and I’m at the point where it’s also a reasonable chance to get Triple Mushrooms. It’s not too hard to get if you can position yourself correctly.
The hardest part is getting the Blue Shell. There is no real way to manipulate it. You can only get a Blue Shell if you have at least 2000 units behind in the first place. Since it is the closest, it can be about 5% to receive a Blue Shell. You can also only get a Blue Shell if 30 seconds have passed in the game.
So when I hesitate in front of the article boxes, I wait for the two things: the first CPU that gets at least 2000 units in front of me and 30 seconds of playing time [to pass]. A member of our community, GsFlint, found that these two conditions can basically align with each other [time] in Mario Circuit.
My favorite speedruns are those that see players take a small, preferably ridiculous part of a game and get very serious about how to quickly learn how to do it. It’s hard to say how low people can get ‘Blue Yourself’ times Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but you can bet I’ll be watching with bated breath.