When it comes down to it, glitch shortcuts are a dime a dozen in the Mario Kart series. Whether it’s Mario Kart and its 3 second laps, Mario Kart 64 and its famous glitches, or Mario Kart Wii and its litany of ultra shortcuts, the series has tons of awesome tricks to lower your time trial records down further than ever previously thought possible.
Yet despite this, there’s one game that tends to get the short end of the stick there.
Mario Kart DS.
Indeed, despite it having various major glitches to freeze the game or go out of bounds, actual beneficial glitch shortcuts in said title are few and far between. There are no lap skips or Lakitu respawn setups, no checkpoint shenanigans… heck, you can’t even really skip anything by going over a wall you’re not meant to bypass.
It’s a pretty solidly made game really, especially compared to the rest of the series.
But now it seems the glitch shortcut floodgates might be opening. Why? Because after nearly two decades, a new major shortcut has now been found on Waluigi Pinball! Here’s a video showing how it works courtesy of YouTuber and TASer Robert McKinnon:
In theory, it’s a pretty simple concept. You hit the wall on the spiral section in just the right way, and you can bounce over and land on the pinball table part, skipping a sizeable part of the lap in the progress.
But it’s a tough one to pull off, with only TAS runs really making use of it so far. So while the concept may have been obvious, the execution most certainly was not.
Still, it’s exciting nonetheless. Especially given that Waluigi Pinball technically isn’t the only track this trick has been found to work on.
No, the same trick can also be used for a glitch shortcut in Luigi’s Mansion too! Here’s a video showing that setup as well:
And according to a tweet by MKDasher, apparently the trick also works on Delfino Square too.
So, it seems like in a matter of days, three new shortcuts have technically been found in Mario Kart DS. Not too shabby, especially given how few were found in the many years before this point.
What’s more, it’s likely not going to remain TAS only for long. Oh no, if we know the speedrunning scene well enough, it seems like a given that just about anything said to be ‘TAS only’ gets replicated by a human at some point or another.
It happened with Mario Kart Wii’s own ultra shortcuts, including the infamous rail one on Rainbow Road. It happened with Super Mario Maker, with Trimming the Herbs getting beaten by a human player just days before the servers shut down…
And we’d hazard a guess it’ll probably happen with these shortcuts too. It may take a week, or it might take a few years, but we’re almost certain it’s going to happen eventually.
Either way, congrats everyone! Congrats on finding some major shortcuts in Mario Kart DS ten years after its release. Let’s see what other insane skips and tricks get found in the future too.
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