You know you can get it right with a Blue Shell in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe? Speedrunners yes, and they are going to do anything to blow themselves up with the first location targeting item as quickly as possible.
Skilloz, the current world record holder for amusingly called the “Blue Yourself” category, uploaded a video yesterday (h / t Polygon) showing that it is possible to go from the start of the race to spin in a Blue Shell explosion in just under 38 seconds. If you’re a fan of Baby Daisy – there must be at least one of you out there – you may want to look away.
See how Skilloz did it, according to the man himself:
The items you receive depend on how far you are from first place. Knowing this, I get out of my head at the beginning to have a good chance of getting a Star. So I run to the next set of items and I’m at the point where getting triple mushrooms is also a pretty decent chance. They are not terribly difficult to obtain if you are able to 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 are at least 2,000 units behind the first place. Since it is as close as you can be, you have about a 5% chance of receiving a Blue Shell. You can also only get a Blue Shell after 30 seconds in the game.
So, when I hesitate in front of these item boxes, I’m waiting for these two things: the first-place CPU to get at least 2,000 units in front of me and 30 seconds of game time [to pass]. A member of our community, GsFlint, found that these two conditions can basically align with the same [time] in Mario Circuit.
My favorite speedruns are those in which players take a small, preferably ridiculous, part of a game and take learning how to do it very seriously very seriously. It is difficult to say how low people will be able to obtain “Blue Yourself” times in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but you can bet I’ll be watching with my breath held.