Topic: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

@NEStalgia Nope, no downloading going on, though I have just started using the Friends system, so I'll put that down as a 'maybe' for now. I'm also mostly playing offline, wanting to unlock all the vehicle options.

@gcunit If you're getting any updates the friends list might do it. I still get a stutter shortly after I wake the machine due to friend request I've left pending since the Splatoon 2 testfire. It pulls the alert every time and causes a stutter.

They probably should fix when/how it does those updates in a firmware patch.

There was an article a while back saying they're about the same.

I seem to be so much worse at this online than Mario Kart DS, Wii & 7. It's embarrassing. I am generally winning against the computer on 150cc but coming last quite often online.

Must be that everyone has had the game on Wii U. Roll on Christmas when I have a chance of beating people who've just picked it up - and I'm a bit more experienced.

I personally think it's slightly less drain on the battery then Zelda. Where as Zelda with everything full blast I was getting close to 2.5 hours but offline on Kart 8 I'm getting about 3 or more hours with everything full blast but WiFi turned off. If I'm not online why bother with it on.

@DarthNocturnal Not sure what you mean by safely but neither system will save your game and both recommend closing the game out first.

Bob-omb Blast on Dragon Palace is pretty fun. The inside room is always total chaos with people constantly dropping bombs around the big cluster of item boxes. Smart thing to do is sit outside the circle of destruction and throw bombs into it. I suspect a lot of people don't know you can throw further by holding the button...

In racing news, I encountered a really good German player named younesemin who won most of the races we played. Went 2-9 against him while having a positive record against everyone else in the session (only one other player even kept it close). He was using the sport bike, so now I'm a little scared of inside drifters...

Yup, I play battle mode exactly as little as I always did =P

What are the main differences between bikes and carts in this game? In the Wii game, bikes could wheelie for speed, but couldn't get the highest tier of drift boost. But that doesn't seem to be the case in this game.

Is it mainly handling? I've noticed the drift arc feels a little different.

@Maxz Some, but not all, bikes drift in a tighter circle than other vehicles. That's what I mean by "inside drifting". It's better for hugging corners but makes it harder to draw out your drift for the miniturbo. This was the case in MKWii as well.

The other bikes, and the ATVs, aren't really any different from karts as far as I know.

@gcunit
Think tests showed it eats up exact same battery life as Zelda. Keep on max brightness but auto brightness turned on to dim it just a hair (and sometimes I'll move the brightness slider left with one super quick tap of the Dpad, so it's at like 95% just to squeeze a little extra juice without sacrificing quality of the experience).

I recommend the brand new Anker Powercore+ PD 26,800mAh portable battery (not the Powercore, and not the Powercore+, but the new Powercore+ Power Delivery model). It's got enough battery in the trunk to run Zelda/Mario Kart on full brightness max settings for a minimum of 15 hours (that's assuming 2.5 hrs playtime per charge, which you'll probably get 3hrs so 18 minimum, and for games like Shovel Knight we're talking 24 hrs straight playtime). And it uses Power Delivery to provide the maximum 18 watts Switch can take in handheld mode for super fast, sub-3hr 0-100% charge times (even while playing Zelda on max settings, you can gain 4% every 5 minutes).

I keep mine with me in my small carry case for Switch at all times. Nomatter where I go, I can binge out all day and never have to worry about battery life. And for the whole charging in tabletop mode, there's a $9.99 portable smartphone tripod that folds up to be 5" long, can just set on that and charge from battery using a right angle USB-C cable (you can use those Hori playstands, and it sits high enough to not need a right angle, but they're like 5X bigger than the tripod, and there's only so much space in a carry case)

I'm starting to wonder if the symbol used for WiFi isn't working right. Even though I'm mostly on 1 bar or worse I'm not having any issues getting online with the Switch so far docked or not.

In the last days (2-3) i'm having a little problem: it gives me error on first attempt online, but if i go out of online menu and re-enter, it goes all straight well. Only thing is i have to do it again if it crashes during a race (very very rare). It's pretty strange because the races go really well and smooth, so i wonder if this is a servers problem...

so we can't upload clips to youtube like we could on WiiU??! ):
What's the point of MK TV??!!

I'm also reassured that online matches are connecting just as well as previous Mario Kart games, even if my Switch is telling me my wifi signal is poor

@Spoony_Tech

Same. I'm upstairs and it gets 1 bar out of 3 for the 5gHz signal and 1-2 bars out of 3 for the 2.4gHz signal (flickers to 2 bars sometimes).

But the connection is rock solid. Even on the 5gHz which has notoriously shorter range, I run a speed test on Switch and get 23mbps, and on 2.4gHz I get 13mbps, and Ethernet via Powerline adapters and Ethernet adapter I get 8.5mbps.

So ya, solid speed and perfect connection. Even on one bar, it's rock solid.

Screenshot goldmine. And once they patch in video capture on the system level, it'll be perfect for cherry picking the best ones for upload.

While going for the gold wheels I found the Dolphin Shoals staff ghost to be as disproportionally difficult as I remembered, so I started wondering if the 150cc ghosts in this version were the same as the original despite the purple boost being new. I turned on the Wii U for a comparison and it turns out they aren't — the players and characters are the same, but the times are different. Most of them are around 2-6 seconds faster (Dolphin Shoals is actually improved by 4.328 seconds), although a few are a bit slower. I still found it pretty easy to beat them all, though.

The biggest improvement I noticed was 7.675 seconds on Excitebike Arena, which made me think they might have changed the track's Time Trial layout, but nope, it's the same. Interestingly, the new Super Bell Subway ghost has an awful first lap that offsets an improved second and third to bring the time within a second of the original, which makes me wonder if the player did that on purpose - maybe someone thought their new time was too good.

@Zyrac Perhaps because they added the purple boost that would increase speed overall in certain turns?

In any case, I am eating my words a bit as the Joy-Con desync is hitting me a bit hard in 2-player couch co-op. Sometimes twice or more a race with my father using the pro controller and me using the Joy-Con grip, my steering (left) and other things I haven't pinned down will stop responding. I can hold a drift through it, but without steering the drift's arc defaults to neutral. It's very strange for Nintendo to have a problem like this even at launch, but I suppose these are the growing pains that come with the first hybrid system.

@Haru17
Call Nintendo. I had that issue in one of my Joycons at launch. I have 5 sets of Joycon among 2 consoles, and only 1 of them had the issue (the left blue Joycon which came packaged with my other Switch), but because of that it stuck out like a sore thumb in the settings for testing analogs.

Anyways, I called them up, and before we'd even hung up they emailed me a 2 day shipping label. Dropped it off on a Monday, it arrived Wednesday, email was sent confirming it was repaired that same day, and shipped out that same day with an overnight label, and was waiting for me Thursday when I got home from work. Whole thing took 72 hrs, round trip.

If you paid for it, it should work right. I'd give em a call, get it taken care of now while it's in warranty. Unless you have a triwing, you can just pop it open and stuff a cube of foam in there yourself.

@JaxonH Yeah. My dock is also decidedly not parallel, so I have to get around to sending them both in. Putting on the screen protector has removed the stress where I'm careful about docking and hurrying to send it in, so I guess I just have to resolve to do it, haha.