The best Mario Kart 8 set-up, according to science
There is no single perfect character build for Mario Kart 8, but a bit of scientific thinking can be employed to find what might be the perfect one of you.
A data scientist from Paris, Antoine Mayerowitz, has explored this idea using the data models created by Vilfredo Pareto more than 100 years ago.
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Of the 700,000 variations, the recommended setup for good players is Princess Peach with the Teddy Buggy car, the Roller tires and the Cloud glider. This provides a good balance of speed and acceleration, as well as a solid turbo boost.
If you are a bit less experienced, you may want to swap the teddy car for the Landship. This puts a bit more focus on acceleration, to help you recover from those slip-ups.
However, you can dig much deeper into this idea if you want.
Mayerowitz digs into the mechanical guts of Mario Kart 8 using the Pareto efficiency principle. This helps you analyse a swathe of suboptimal options when the key benefit of one character or car is typically offset by a specific weakness in another area.
You see this in the Bowser character, for example, who has epic top speed but rubbish acceleration.
Based on the model Mayerowitz uses, most folks should never pick Bowser or Wario because, in that high-speed class, Donkey Kong provides a better balance of speed and acceleration.
And it only gets more complicated when you start to look at other factors like handling, weight, off-road ability and turbo. Mayerowitz’s website lets you play around with priority sliders to work out your ideal build.
As you do, though, you’ll find the real lesson here. While a more scientific approach to Mario Kart optimisation doesn’t rule out experimentation, it does mean there are plenty of builds that really don’t make a whole lot of sense. Picking a car because it looks nice is not a good idea, apparently.
It’s still not going to help you when your friend in last place gets a Bullet Bill and flies past you just before the finish line, though.
Martio Kart 8 Deluxe for Nintendo Switch is the second best-selling Nintendo game of all time, with upwards of 60.58 million copies sold, according to Nintendo. It is only surpassed by Wii Sports, the original pack-in title of the 101-million-selling console.
