Post Script
Knockout Tour’s drive to survive is a game-changing delight
Being at the head of the pack, even in the final stretch, doesn’t guarantee you’ll be safe from elimination in Knockout Tour
We tend to think of each new Mario Kart as an experiment, tweaking the variables in some new way. Motion controls, two-wheelers, dual drivers, gliders, anti-grav tracks: the most successful of these stick around, to become a permanent part of the formula. But laid out like that, don’t they seem like such small deviations? No wonder 8 Deluxe was able to package up practically every track from the series’ history.
We don’t point this out to complain but rather to emphasise how, when the essentials are carved into our synapses by repetition, even a minor change is felt keenly. Ridiculous as this might seem, it takes us a while to get over the fact that solo shells now orbit your kart without requiring you to hold down the trigger, increasing the likelihood that they’ll be driven into. It feels instinctively unfair that Lakitu now confiscates all carried items along with the usual coin tax for a rescue. And even after dozens of hours we’ve yet to entirely master that hop manoeuvre, let alone the new 180° turn and rewind function, because they all have to compete with decades of established muscle memory. It’s a miracle, then, that World’s biggest experiment manages to feel so immediately natural.