Mario Kart 8

The big visual idea is anti-gravity. On some parts of a course, the vehicle's wheels turn outward and glow blue, letting the track run up a wall or overhead. The screenshots below show a kart leaning onto a steep wall and another racer driving along a tilted road. These are still part of the race route, not a separate flight mode. Bumping another racer or a glowing object in these sections can give you a spin boost. Other courses keep the familiar road, water and glider sections. The original Wii U game has 32 base courses; extra DLC courses were sold later and should not be confused with what came on every launch copy.

You can race alone against computer-controlled opponents, play local split-screen with friends, or try battle mode. Nintendo ended the Wii U game's online services in April 2024, so an old description promising live online races would be misleading today. Local and offline modes are still the reason to revisit this 2014 release. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, released later for Switch, has added content and some changed mechanics. This fiche is for the original Wii U game; if you want to learn a core skill here, see our Wii U drift and Mini-Turbo guide.

Nintendo launched Mario Kart 8 in Japan on May 29, 2014, and in North America and Europe on May 30. The original platform was Wii U. In the United States and Canada, the original game's ESRB rating is E (Everyone).