As most everyone who plays Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Nintendo Switch knows, the AI racers are notoriously hard to beat, to the point where they appear to be cheating. So long as they’re on the other team, that is. With our 255+ hours, we’ve had quite a few interesting replays to save in this game, and today I’d like to share some of our favorites with you.

Morton’s Mind-Powers

Morton was the only one from the red team near the button, so we’re assuming that it was him even though it appears that he never touched the button…

Piranha Plants Sleeping on the Job

I feel like I’ve tried this same trick several times, and have never gotten it to work. But I suppose the rules do seem to be different for the AI racers.

Our Best Renegade Round-Up Record

Everyone on the AI team was caught in under 12 seconds. Chickadee (playing as Princess Daisy, her favorite character) was the catching queen- she caught four out of six people from the other team in this replay!

Photo Finish

Thanks to Toad, we didn’t get all three stars on that Grand Prix cup that time. We’d been hitting him with every item we got the entire last section of the race, and he still got first place somehow, which seems to happen way too often when we do Grand Prix mode…

Coin Runners in Wuhu Town Glitch

Apparently when you do Coin Runners on the Wuhu Town map, the AI racers can get stuck trying to collect the coins over the grassy circle in the middle of the map. If they miss it on their first jump over the circle, they turn around and try again but they don’t drive far enough away to be able to build up enough speed to reach the coin, and so they just get stuck trying over and over again to get it. It seems that at least one racer gets stuck like this nearly every time we do Coin Runners in Wuhu Town.

Super Daisy

Chickadee (playing as Princess Daisy again) somehow didn’t get saved by Lakitu when she fell off the cliff, and managed to climb back up onto the track all by herself. Notice how you can see Mario fall into the same pit in the background of this clip. Our hero…🙄

“Smart” Steering

I was happily driving along in Grumble Volcano (in first place) when I hit a glider panel near a part where the track splits off into two different paths (with one higher than the other). I flew over both paths and almost landed on the higher one, but then decided to go on the lower one instead.

Apparently though, I had gotten close enough to the higher path that the Smart Steering thought that I was actually on that higher path, and so it just kept pulling me into the wall trying to get me up the side of the cliff and onto the higher path. I was completely stuck until I paused the game and turned off Smart Steering. Unfortunately, I don’t have a video of this.

Wario’s Magic Boomerang

At first we thought we misread the name when it said “Wario hit you” and saw where Wario was on the map at the time. We’ve tested and discovered that if you aim things perfectly and it’s the third and last throw with the Boomerang, it actually is possible for non-AI racers to do this trick too.

Baby Rosalina Vs. Baby Luigi

It’s always seemed to me that the AI racers can recover faster than the players can, and I think that this pretty much proves it.

Evil Yoshi

It seems like there’s always a traitor on our team, but Yoshi was especially evil in this replay. He was attacking his teammates, protecting the racers on the other team, and every time he got an item he refused to use it against the other team!

Invincible Ludwig

I don’t even know how Ludwig didn’t spin out from this. I thought you had to actually activate a Super Star to be invincible, not just hold it. Unless Mushrooms are the same as Super Stars for the AI racers…?

Invincible Mario

Somehow, even though Mario wasn’t an AI racer, he still somehow managed to pull off this trick. We’re thinking that the game must be rigged in Mario’s favor, whether he’s an AI or not.

Invincible King Boo

King Boo was struck by lightning and then (awhile after he’d stopped blinking from the lightning, but before he went back to his usual size) he got run over by a normal-sized racer with Super Star invincibility and he was completely unaffected by them. Not only that, but he was in eighth place toward the end of the second lap when all this occurred, and he still finished in first place by the end of the race! Unfortunately, I don’t have a video of this either.

Isabelle’s Invincible Piranha Plant

A blast from a sound box may be able to destroy the infamously annoying blue shell, but apparently nothing can stop Isabelle when she’s on a mission to catch everyone on the blue team…

And there you have it. I hope you’ve enjoyed these highlights as much as we have!