UK Charts: The King Returns As Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Takes The Top Spot

A strong week for Switch hardware then. Hmm, was there a sale or a bund-haha silly me, what am I thinking lol.

@EaglyBird Why would they? If sales are still good, why bother with a new game? Just port the old one again, squeeze it for all its worth.

I like how they bought Red Dead Redemption 2 on PS4 in preparation for Red Dead Redemption 1 also on PS4. To those who don't know Red Dead Redemption 2 is a prequel to Red Dead Redemption 1.

@EaglyBird If we knew how Nintendo can top Mario Kart 8, then I dare say we would have been headhunted by the industry lol. They said they have finally got an idea for 9. So it's nice they aren't just sh***ing one out every other year like most western devs when they are on to a good thing.

It's great to see Pikmin 4 still hanging in the top 10. It's always been a niche series for Nintendo, especially here in the UK, so to see it do as well as it has has been amazing. Let's hope Nintendo dont wait 10 years before releasing the next one 😉

@EaglyBird Nintendo doesn't make one Mario Kart entry to top another, they make one every gen so that it represent what the console could do. The only reason the Switch got a port of the Wii U game was that not many people got the chance to play it on Wii U. The Switch itself already got its own Mario Kart entry (Mario Kart Live), so likely Mario Kart 10 would be something new spectacular. Who knows, it could also be a VR game too.

Nintendo had sacrificed 5 of their racing games (F-Zero, Excitebike, 1080, Wave Race, and Diddy Kong Racing) in favor of Mario Kart, it's likely they'll take features away from those five and implement them into the next Mario Kart. After all we already got karts and bikes, next they'll probably add hovercrafts and boats from F-Zero and Wave Race as well. I see they already add gliders from PilotWings. Likely they may even add a mode where you snowboarding or water surfing too or maybe a unicycle as well from their old racing game, Uniracer. Heck there might even be a monster truck style mode similar to Stunt Race FX for Mario Kart 10. This is Nintendo retired all their other racing games for Mario Kart. After retiring those then Nintendo turns Mario Kart into Super Smash Racing

@EaglyBird Minecraft is ancient at this point and still gets sold regularly. People are born every 5 min and people age then they buy these things. It’s not the same people buying the same game 10 times if it’s not ported 10 times so there is nothing to tire from. It’s just the current Gen buying what the previous Gen bought.

It's fantastic seeing MK8 Deluxe return to 1st.

@Serpenterror Gonna need a source for that mate. Last I read, they simply hadn't thought of anything exciting to do with the F-Zero franchise.

@EaglyBird It'll be interesting to see and will depend a lot on whether the new switch is backwards compatible. If its not, I would guess everyone with a switch 2 will get Mario Kart 9 (or whatever it's called), same as they did with 8. But if it's backwards compatible they will have to sell gamers on why they need the new one.

I'm a Nintendo obsessive but mario kart is really just in my collection for family get togethers or kid play dates - I'm not sure I would need the new one for that purpose

@GrailUK You don't need source for it, just play Mario Kart 8 and you will see all the evidence slowly coming into place. F-Zero, Diddy Kong Racing, 1080, and even Excitebike had tracks and vehicles in there that show Nintendo is willing to take whatever those games had and put them into Mario Kart. Mount Wario could easily be turn into a 1080 snowboarding track if Nintendo wanted to, originally in older Mario Kart games when your racer falls under water for a few seconds, Lakitu will fish them out. Well by borrowing underwater section from games like Diddy Kong Racing they no longer had to worry about that. Then there's gravity feature which allow vehicles to defy gravity and ride through tubes and walls, these are implements from F-Zero. Then we had gliders which allow vehicles to descends safely back to track, gliders are taken from the PilotWings series. The motorbikes themselves are from Excitebike. Heck Nintendo even took a feature from a racing game that's not their own, seasonal version of a track for example the Animal Crossing track had four different versions of that same track with their seasons. This feature is taken from Sonic R which had only four tracks but each track had different seasonal versions of that track.

@Serpenterror I get that. But they borrowed from F-Zero (even the 200cc mode is a nod I'm sure!) and put them into Mario Kart to make it feel different. Where can they take F-Zero? (gyro controls with pitch etc so you have to maximize your grip on the tracks maybe. That would be pretty hardcore!) I dunno. Mario Kart seems to have less design restrictions so anything goes.

(By the way, if having water tracks in Mario Kart 10 is how we get a new Wave Race, I'll be ok with that lol.)

Yeah I really hope Nintendo tests the waters with F-Zero in the near future, even just a re-release of GX with online.
Imagine that making it into the charts!

Out of the the 5 'dead' racing series @Serpenterror mentioned above, I would give this one a shot for a comeback!

@EaglyBird I want to see the next Mario Kart use jump more. A platforming racer. Bring back the feather for shortcuts. Make the tracks perilous if you don't time jumps. That's where I would go.

@EaglyBird That's where game design comes in lol.

I think people in the UK shop for MK8 and GTA 5 as part of their weekly groceries. That's my head canon as to why they keep selling so well.

While I love to see new blood on these lists, there is no denying just how incredible it is, to see Mario Kart 8 Deluxe in the top spot, even after all these years.

Seeing that MK8's DLC is almost finally complete, whoever didn't own the game now is the time to get it.
Actually about half of the Switch player base owns MK8 by now ... room for another potential 60 million players

@Bunkerneath @EaglyBird plus they need something to sell the next system…. I won’t drop $400 to play a port of a decade old game.

Looking forward to Mario Kart 8 Ultimate Deluxe on the Switch2.

It would be fun to be presented with one of these lists from a previous year and try to guess what year it's from, with so many perennial top sellers, remakes, and ports.

This is exactly why I'm dubious about Nintendo's next system being backwards compatible.
Why give us our game libraries when they can keep selling them back to us.

This is why we ain't getting a Switch successor next year. There's absolutely zero reason to. The seemingly-credible rumors will age just as well as the Switch Pro rumors we got in 2018...and 2019...and 2020...and 2021. Screenshot this comment and if I'm wrong in a year, I'll update my pfp to Soos' more successful cousin Reggie. (Not Fils-Aimé, a different Reggie, mind you.)

Does it actually rise or is it rather that it’s a steady seller, reclaiming the top spot whenever there’s no other big new release?

MK8D is just insane, lol.

Great to see TotK and Pikmin 4 still in the top 10.

At this rate MK9 will never get released 🙄

The staying power of this game is phenomenal. Unfortunately, that’s also why we won’t see a sequel anytime soon lol

@NintendoWife

I'm guessing this is exactly what it is. Without actual sales figures we can't say for certain, but given that the highest new entry this week is at #11 it's more a case of other games tailing off and MK8DX remaining consistent.

I wish the UK would release exact sales figures like the Japanese charts do.

MK8D and GTA V in the top two, haha.

The eternal sales bros are hanging out.

@Waluigi451 I think Mk9 will be a launch title for the switch 2 in 2024.