You know you can hit a Blue Shell Mario Kart 8 Deluxe? Speedrunners do this, and will do their best to explode with the first target as quickly as possible.
Skilloz, the current world record for hilariously 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 spinning in a Blue Shell explosion in just under 38 seconds. If you’re a Baby Daisy fan – there must be at least one of you out there – you might want to look elsewhere.
Here’s how Skilloz did it, after the man himself:
The items you get depend on how far you are from the first place. Knowing this, I have a sandbag at first to have a good chance of getting a star. Then I hurry to the next set of items and am at the point where getting triple mushrooms is also a pretty decent chance. These are not too difficult to achieve if you are able to position yourself correctly.
The hardest part is getting Blue Shell. There is no real way to manipulate it. You can only get a Blue Shell if you have at least 2000 units behind the first place. Because it is the closest to you, it is about a 5% chance to receive a Blue Shell. You can also get a Blue Shell only after 30 seconds have elapsed in the game.
So when I hesitate in front of those article boxes, I expect the two things: CPU first to get at least 2000 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 be aligned in principle in the same way [time] in Mario Circuit.
My favorite speedruns are the ones that see players take a small, preferably ridiculous part of a game and become very serious about learning how to do it fast. It’s hard to say how few will be able to get “Blue Yourself” times. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but you can bet I’ll be out of breath.