What CHz said, although I must admit it looks amazing. Excitebike has pretty much been one of my favorite things ever since the day I first played it on the NES when I was a little kid. This is gonna own.

I'm holding out for a Mach Rider level

It had better play the Excite Bike win theme when the race ends.

OK, so is Mario Kart happening this week? If so I'm a little unsure of how timing is going to work. In the UK the clocks went back last weekend and I believe they don't go back in North America until either tomorrow or next weekend. So, 10pm my time is suddenly an hour out.

So, if we're sticking to 10pm GMT then that's in about 12 hour:

http://gifcountdown.com/europe-londo...ue/counter.gif

Does that work for people, or does that cause problems?

Daylight savings hits tonight at 2am here, so that does leave you an hour ahead for now. I'm fine with getting it started an hour later than usual.

Right, so in the US east coast that would put today's start time at 6pm instead of the usual 5pm. I have no problem with that either, actually probably works out slightly better for me since Philia will be getting home from work around 5:15. I can do either start time though.

Today's Kart session. OP was the best baby daisy.

http://www.hitbox.tv/video/305074

Congratulations OP! Also by default Dave is the worst Baby Daisy.

Also I just found out that only the coins you have at the end of a race count towards your total. Not that it matters really either way since it's not like you can do anything about it, but I was wondering why I didn't have the gold glider yet. The 10k coin requirement for that seems way out of wack with all of the other rewards, especially for just a glider.

Why the hell would you want a glider of all things to be made of gold? Nintendo...

Yeah, I've got all unlockables outside of the glider and it's hilarious how few coins I have by comparison. I think I'm at 4k or something.

Yeah, I'm also at 100% completion except for the gold glider and I'm at ~7400, but that's also with playing some co-op with Philia where both of our coins count as well as her playing some on her own. Wii U clocks Mario Kart 8 gametime at 55 hours, but god knows how accurate that actually is.

On a lark spent 2-3 hours tonight playing online. Man this game is a clusterfuck online. I think our games work fairly well because there's a pretty wide spread of skill levels. Online there's a much larger pool of folks all in the same ballpark skill-wise, especially since the game attempts to match by your skill ranking which is largely bullshit but is a general time spent indicator. So races are largely determined by which one or two players is able to get away from the pack at the very start, then everyone else is usually fucked for the entire race (Piranha Plants are god tier online). Once I was able to get 1st or 2nd place at the end of a race, by virtue of that starting position in the next race I was almost always able to beat out the initial clusterfuck and most of the time was a lock for 1st or 2nd again. But then if you get hit once in the initial barrage you are almost always 100% fucked and are locked outside of the top 3 at the least. It's leads to hilarious instances of totally fucking people but then you also getting totally fucked, and it can be incredibly frustrating. In one particular race I'm running a flawless race, probably almost half a lap ahead of 2nd place on the last lap. Then within a 15-20 second window I literally got hit with a Blue Shell, a Lightning, a Red Shell, and two SEPARATE Bombs. I finished 12th. Also as an aside I'm not sure how item distribution works online, but I see way way way more Lightnings playing with randoms online then in our games. I counted 6 in one game which is crazy. I still think I have personally only gotten one once.

It's a weird problem, and I'm not sure how they solve it. I'm not advocating no item races or anything, but the game is a super clusterfuck where skill only gets you so far. I miss the days of being able to lap SECOND place AI in 150cc in the original SMK because there was none of the crazy rubber banding/blue shells etc. Playing against other people obviously some of that isn't a factor, but I'm not sure how you really balance that. It's fun, but with every iteration the game feels more and more like Mario Party and not Mario Kart.

I do really hope the DLC comes out before Smash so I can actually play it with people. Also I hope the Master Cycle isn't an inside bike because fuck skills

If it's not an inside bike, I will be sad.

You sound mad about that tho.

I've only fucked around with randoms a few times, but let's just say that it's at least nice that the Wii U hasn't been completely opened up for shitting in, since INFINITE STAR cheaters in MKWii was extremely aggravating.

That said, 9/10s of the point of Mario Kart is yelling at the other guy to get good and other such shit. Lack of voice chat fucking murders it.

Yeah I played MK Wii for like, an hour, so no experience there but I heard about that.

But yeah, this is basically a bullshit party game which is why I like playing with you guys, but wouldn't play on my own very much. I'm just wondering what they could do to try to fix that and not make every race an insane clusterfuck that is impossible to get out of 99% of the time.

I don't think anybody here plays own their own, really. I only get on Saturdays and have pubbed it up with CHz maybe once or twice outside of that.

What I'm saying is that you need to get good.

I...came in first in like ~75% of the 12 player lobbies I was in? That wasn't really my point. Also I'm only really playing for coins at this point, so eh.

What's the story behind the two sets of headphones tag?

Also the story re: Tiny Left Space. We're on Yoshi Valley, it's the final lap, and I'm trailing behind Dave. As we approach the bridge that stupid giant Yoshi egg is just about to cover the bridge entirely. What does Dave do? He does to the left DIRECTLY INTO THE PATH of said giant egg. First place DAISY BLUE YOSHI. Shit was fucking hilarious. Dave you are dumb why would you do that you see the egg going that way man.

You know Daravon for a guy who doesn't care you sure do care a lot. Keep going, you almost have enough vinegar to go with that bucket of salt. ;)

The last time (?) m00 played he was wearing two headsets, one for game audio and one for the skype call.

And he still thought lap 2 was the final lap on one race, even though he could finally hear the BGM speedup for once.

The "heads of setphones" part is because he's bad at saying words out loud.

THE AUDIO IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HEADPHONES

It's been pulled down, but there was something briefly up on the official Mario Kart site that was listing MK Amiibo support being added in a software update on 11/13/14, maybe the same date as the DLC???

Apparently all Amiibo support for MK is just going to be your Mii getting a racing suit based on the Amiibo you're using. Thank you Nintendo for letting me continue to not care about Amiibo functionality.

Yeah, how dare they not include fully featured AI racers you train in a free patch several months after the game releases for a toy that wasn't close to completed when the thing came out.

I think it's kind of ace actually that they're even going back and adding support for that shit in to older software titles, even if it is minor. Can you imagine the anger if it was something more substantial?

http://i.vimeocdn.com/video/355020460_640.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Everything.JPG

YouTube Video

Just going to leave this here.

HNNNNNNNNNNNGH

Also here's a 13 minute Nintendo Minute where they play a bunch of the new stuff:

YouTube Video

Tanooki Mario going into his Mario 3 statue pose when he does a trick is fucking amazing. Also super fucking pumped about SNES Rainbow Road being in.

I agree, and I'm not upset at all by this; I'm actually honestly super pumped about it since it means less shit I have to think about buying. They kinda sorta make sense for Smash, but for all of these other games and especially games that are already out like MK and Hyrule Warriors I don't really see the point. I mean, additional cosmetic content is cool and why not, but that's hardly any sort of compelling reason for someone to get them. And if it WAS something substantial people would flip out like you said, so it's a lose-lose. I don't even know what they'd do really in terms of significant in-game content for games with these things other than maybe if you buy them they come with DLC, making it sort of like buying a physical copy of DLC or something. Fuck, I barely even know what Amiibos can be used for in general other than custom moves and storage in stuff like Smash. Super fascinating from a physical/collectible perspective, but they've given me zero reason to care about them for use in games.