It’s a low-effort week coming up for me, but I wanted to say a few words about Kibako’s video on all the ways Blue Shells can be dodged in Mario Kart World (6½ minutes). Even through most of the words are Japanese, the idea comes across pretty well.
You may remember that Blue Shells couldn’t be dodged at all before MK8. Well if you could figure out a way to become invincible you could avoid getting clobbered and the likely loss of position, but you never get invincibility stars in first place, they only show up if you’re badly trailing, so it doesn’t often come up.
But then people found out that if you used the Super Horn item just before getting hit by a Blue Shell, it’d destroy it, and Horns can generate when you’re in the middle of the pack. And then they found out, if you used a turbo-powered Super Mushroom in a brief window before the shell hit, you could actually zip out of its explosion without getting caught in it.
But now, there’s even more ways to dodge what had, since the Mario Kart 64 days, become legendary for being the inevitable, the Grim Reaper of Mario Kart. There are now three items that make you invincible, or at least invulnerable enough to thwart the Blue Meanie. And if you’re willing to use the new rewind feature and have the presence of mind to use it, you can more generally avoid getting hit. You’ll be sent back to an earlier place on the track, but used at the right moment and for just long enough, you actually come out ahead relative to the time lost from getting pasted.
Super Horns and Mushrooms (and Mushroom’s variants, the Triple Mushroom and Golden Mushroom) can still thwart the spiny menace. But… what about zippers? What about the turbo effect from Dash Food? For the answer to that, and some other possible options, I refer you to the video.
