First place is one of the most dangerous places to be during a Mario Kart match. A lead can prove temporary as the game regales everyone else some of its most powerful items, many of which will be aimed directly at the front of the pack. First place, meanwhile, is relegated to garbage weapons like bananas and green shells.
In this sense, Mario Kart World is like any other iteration of Nintendo’s chaotic racer. The difference is that players are trying to exploit this design, which can lead to some absurd races now that lobbies hold 24 players. As we’ve witnessed with our own eyes, rather than showcasing a fight for dominance, Mario Kart World can sometimes devolve into a struggle for mediocrity.
The tactic isn’t adopted across the board. Some Mario Kart World players are learning new wall riding techniques that make the racer look more like Tony Hawk, and the feather is empowering some fans to create their own amazing shortcuts.
But it’s also becoming increasingly common to see people take things slow, happily lagging behind the competition with the confidence that 24th place can transform into 1st place after a good item box draw. In a video with over 359K views, YouTuber Shortcat spends 46 minutes encouraging players to bag their races, because it’s a good strategy that can ensure you’ll place well by the end of the match. Ideally, you go along at a leisurely pace until you get a really good item, like a star. Once you have it, you’re supposed to hold on to it until an opportune time, like the last lap of the race.
It’s wild to watch in action. You can see people stop accelerating altogether for a few seconds so they’ll fall behind. Some players don’t go for extremes, and instead simply aim to be near the middle of the pack, especially as the match progresses.
“He played that race SO SLOW and won?!?!” one YouTube commenter says of Shortcat’s gameplay footage. “It felt like watching a grandpa play. He didn’t even do anything crazy he just took the two shortcuts. That’s ridiculous, thanks Nintendo.”
Elsewhere, while players cop to adopting the strategy, they don’t really seem happy about it. “It really is ridiculous,” says JupiterClimb, as he narrates a match where he’s shown in last place. “Just absolutely flagrant. Just fully parked, not even trying to play the game,” he says, describing what other people are doing during the race.
“With 24 players this is the only way to keep it competitive,” one reply reads. “Even in dead last you should feel like you have a chance go win.”
It’s a complex issue, especially when you consider that people who do try and compete normally also dislike that the game treats them like a digital punching bag. It’s not fun when you’re doing well and get hit by five different thigns in a row. But if that happens, and you end up near last place, Mario Kart World’s design also means you have a real shot at regaining better placement if the trouncing didn’t happen near the end of the match. In this clip, you can watch as one racer goes from first, last, to then first again over the course of about 20 seconds. The player still calls the whole thing “broken.”
It’s also not a concept unique to Mario Kart, arguably. In running, there’s something called progression runs, where athletes will start off at a slow to moderate pace and then speed up near the end, which is done to build endurance and avoid injury. Then again, there are also controversial instances of competitors who intentionally slow down during a race, as it can be difficult to discern the motivation behind the tactic.
One of the most common forms of sandbagging in
a Mario Kart World race involves waiting for a drop of the lightning item, which hits every single rival on the track. The race then becomes about managing lightning attacks from opponents, and optimally timing when you unleash it.
“Right now a lot of people hold their dodge items in around 10~17 [place]” writes on YouTube comment on Shortcat’s video. “But doing so means more people behind you are likely to use an early shock, so you have to predict when it’s going to happen. It becomes a bit of a 50/50 guessing if it’ll be used early or not, so it’s usually better to just slow down and avoid it altogether.”
With time, it’s likely that players will develop all sorts of tactics and shortcuts that we can’t even imagine at present. Perhaps sandbagging will fall from grace as a preferred method once people find better ways of staying in first. For some, it doesn’t seem like a particularly big deal now that Mario Kart World has shortened the amount of time players get stunned after getting hit by an attack.
People also complained about sandbagging in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and insisted that it ruined the game. Perhaps Nintendo agreed with this assessment, because in 2023, the best-selling Switch racer got an update that seemed to nerf the tactic. Specifically, Mario Kart 8 prevented players from acquiring strong items if they stopped or drove in reverse, or if they picked up the same box multiple times during a race. But that patch dropped many years into Mario Kart 8’s lifespan, amid a generation when Nintendo was still getting a grasp around games as service.
Will things be different this time around? Switch 2 is a new generation, and a new opportunity for Nintendo to display its adeptness at maintaining live service games. We could get a version of Mario Kart World that feels more actively in conversation with player concerns.
Or, just as likely: we’ll have to accept that Mario Kart’s accessibility is directly tied to Nintendo’s willingness to level the playing field so that anyone, regardless of skill, has a legitimate chance of doing well during a race. So long as that design ethos holds true, sandbagging can never go away completely.
