Piss off your friends with your deep knowledge of these Mario Kart shortcuts

Whether you’re playing Grumble Volcano, Mushroom Gorge, or Coconut Mall, the best shortcuts are all about tricking the game into thinking you’ve completed a full lap when really you’ve just turned around and gone through the finish line again. This usually involves launching yourself off the track in some precise manner or doing a frame perfect turn at a particularly broken corner of the level. But, as Summoning Salt explains, each of these ultra shortcuts is founded on the same basic principle.

Simply put, Mario Kart Wii levels are divided up into invisible checkpoints, some of which are “key checkpoints” that tell the game if you’re making progress on your lap. In order to trick the game into thinking you’ve completed a lap when you haven’t, you must at least make it as far back as the final key checkpoint before proceeding through the finish line. Over the years, speed-runners have discovered and perfected these small loops, enhancing them with glitchy wall-clip jumps and strategic mushroom boosts.

Using the techniques explored in this video, you should have no problem trouncing your friends the next time you pay a visit to Rainbow Road. Of course, if you’ve played Mario Kart enough to actually be able to do any of these tricks, we’re not sure you have time for friends in the first place.

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