So, we have a few more exclusives for you regarding Mario Kart 8, courtesy GameXplain. They had a one hour Q&A session where they went through what is apparently 26 pages of questions. We pick out the best answers to share with you below.
1. By all accounts, all characters have been revealed.
2. One part is unlocked every 50 coins.
3. The game difficulty has been raised, and in a fair way. Nintendo raised the AI in such a way that they are good at finding shortcuts.
4. All eight tracks in Battle Mode are based on existing tracks in the game, and slightly modified.
5. You do not need to unlock the original tracks to play their Battle Mode versions.
6. Characters are unlocked by completing Grand Prix courses.
7. There is no automatic transmission. Whatever control scheme you use, you have to switch gears yourself.
8. The Lakitu boost trick is gone, so if you ever fall over a stage and Lakitu has to fish you out, you can’t get a boost out of it.
9. There does not seem to be any hint that the game will have DLC.
10. The ranking system works the same way it did in Mario Kart Wii and Mario Kart 7, where you can earn between one to three stars for finishing a course.
11. The Crazy Eight is rarer than the Super Horn. It only came up once after a day of playing.
12. Wheelies seem to be gone from the game as a mechanic. You might see some power-ups with wheelie animations but that’s the extent of it.
13. Unfortunately, mini-maps only appear on the GamePad. There’s no option to put them in the main screen.
14. Surprisingly, the new items don’t change gameplay that much, mostly because the overpowered ones are really rare.
There’s a lot more to go through, some of which are locked behind embargo, some are initial impressions that may change, and some pure opinion. You can watch the whole thing, if you have an hour to kill, below.
