Mario Kart 8 Deluxe launched for Nintendo Switch on Friday and, as YouTuber AbdallahSmash026 points out, it solves a subtle problem with acceleration from the 2014 original on Wii U.
The problem is that acceleration was always rounded down to the nearest whole number in a kart's rating. Those familiar with the rating system of Mario Kart 8 know that vehicle attributes are scored in quarter-block increments — 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and the like. Well actually, on the Wii U, a kart rated at 2.75 in acceleration raced as if it was rated 2. Abdallah Smash pointed this out earlier, and wanted to see if it was the same on the Switch.
It isn’t! In this video, Abdallah Smash races against ghosts in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe to show that vehicles have proper acceleration differentials. A 2.75 acceleration kart gets to full speed faster than a 2.5, and so on.
See for yourself, as the test subjects with fractionally better accelerations outrace the ghosts at the bottom of their tier. The proof is right there.
It's unfortunate that Mario Kart 8 on Wii U had so many vehicles with meaningless fractional ratings but it's good to see this problem was resolved in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. As Abdallah Smash notes, so much of Mario Kart, as a series, is about getting back to top speed, because of how hazards, shells, banana peels, etc. constantly figure into a race. And it also makes the vehicle fleet more meaningful and useful.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold 459,000 copies in the U.S. on launch day, and has a remarkable 45 percent attach rate with Nintendo Switch's current installation base. That's not the eye-popping number put up by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which has somehow sold more copies on Switch than consoles, but this is the fastest-selling Mario Kart in franchise history