Mario Kart Speedrunners race to blow themselves up with blue shells

Did you know you can hit yourself with a Blue Shell in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe? Speedrunners do, and they go out of their way to blow themselves up with the first item of geo-targeting as quickly as possible.

Skilloz, the current world record holder for hilarious category named “Blue Yourself”, uploaded a video yesterday (h / t Polygon) showing that it is possible to go from the start of the race to a spinning in a Blue Shell explosion in just under 38 seconds. If you’re a fan of Baby Daisy – there must be at least one of you out there – you might want to look away.

Here’s how Skilloz did it, according to the man himself:

The items you get depend on how far away you are from the top spot. Knowing this, I do sandbags at the start to have a good chance of getting a star. Then I’m rushing to the next set of articles and I’m at a point where getting triple mushrooms is pretty decent luck as well. These are not too difficult to obtain if you are able to position yourself correctly.

The hardest part is getting the Blue Shell. There’s no real way to handle it. You can only get a Blue Shell if you are at least 2000 units behind first place. Since it’s the closest you can get, it’s about a 5% chance of receiving a Blue Shell. You can also only get a Blue Shell after 30 seconds have passed in the game.

So when I hesitate in front of these item boxes, I wait for these two things: the first processor to have at least 2000 units in front of me and 30 seconds of playing time [to pass]. A member of our community, GsFlint, found that these two conditions can fundamentally align with each other at the same time [time] in Mario Circuit.

My favorite speedruns are the ones that see players take a small, preferably ridiculous, part of a game and get really serious about learning how to do it quickly. It’s hard to say how low-level people will be able to get “Blue Yourself” times by Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but you can bet I’ll be looking forward to it.