Post by goldensandslash on Jan 11, 2024 5:18:55 GMT
Mario Kart is one of the best-selling racing game series of all time. It's a lot of fun. You drive around various race courses, and see who can complete the required number of laps (usually 3, though it varies by racetrack) first. Along the way, you get items that can either let you go faster, take shortcuts, or attack other drivers in order to slow them down. And, of course, there's also a lot of obstacles on the course that will attack players as well. Offense is clearly a big part of the game, and what separates this from other racing games.
So it should come as no surprise that they have a mode dedicated just to battling each other, Battle Mode. Unlike the standard racing mode, the way you play battle mode is... radically different between each of the Mario Kart games. Giving a brief overview is basically impossible. The best that I can do is say that these take place on battle maps, which are wide open areas to drive around in, without having a dedicated "finish line", and you use items to attack each other. Even that explanation isn't accurate to one version of this...
So yeah, basically impossible to describe. So instead, I thought I'd make a quick little retrospective, showing off each game's Battle Mode and explain how each one works. Because, believe it or not... there's A TON of debate over which ones are the best and which ones are the worst. Everyone seems to have their own ranking that is unique to them.
So, let's take a look at each one.
Super Mario Kart (SNES)
So... the first Mario Kart game is on the SNES... which means that it was quite limited due to the hardware.
Case in point, the SNES only has two controller ports, so you can only do Battle Mode with two people, and not any more than that.
In this game, the way that Battle Mode works is that each player has three balloons and when you get hit, then one of your balloons is popped. If all of your balloons are popped, you lose.
That's it, that's the whole mode.
But... it's surprisingly not the worst. A lot of modern consoles struggle to make a Battle Mode this good... because... yeah, enjoy this while it lasts, it's gonna get butchered.
One other thing of note is that, in the SNES version, the Battle Mode is EXCLUSIVELY two-player. You cannot play this in single-player against a computer. Modern Mario Kart games do let you do this, but also let you disable computer players if you wish, so this is definitely dated in that regard.
Mario Kart 64 (Nintendo 64)
Mario Kart 64 is often cited as being the best version of Mario Kart's Battle Mode.
It's pretty much the same as Super Mario Kart on SNES, but with one key difference: you can now play with up to 4 players.
This creates a conundrum, as... what happens when a player is eliminated? Do they just have to sit there and watch and do nothing as their friends have all the fun?
Well, no. They actually thought of that.
When a player is eliminated, they turn into a Bomb Car. The Bomb Car cannot win the match, but if they crash themselves into another player, they will explode, thereby popping one of that player's balloons. The Bomb Car also gets stunned if they themselves are attacked. So they can still influence the match, despite no longer being able to win it.
But... wait. Won't that give too much control to the players who aren't playing anymore? No. Because... after a Bomb Car explodes once, they don't respawn. They are out of the game for real at that point. It prevents them from influencing the match too heavily, while still progressing the game along to try to reach a conclusion.
Mario Kart: Super Circuit (Game Boy Advance)
Moving on to Mario Kart: Super Circuit, this is nearly identical to Mario Kart 64 in terms of the ruleset (though the battle maps for Mario Kart 64 are better).
The one difference is that instead of turning into a Bomb Car, you turn into an actual Bomb. But... that's purely cosmetic, right? No. The difference is that when the Bomb explodes... it can respawn, and continue to affect the match afterwards.
The other difference is that... getting hit by an item while you are a Bomb will cause you to explode, thereby necessitating you to respawn, so getting hit is A LOT more detrimental in this version.
Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (GameCube)
So, Mario Kart: Double Dash!! does something new with its Battle Mode. There are now three different rulesets that you can choose between: Balloon Battle, Shine Thief, and Bob-Omb Blast.
Balloon Battle is the standard Battle Mode that the previous games have had. Except this time... if you are eliminated... you don't come back as a Bomb or a Bomb Car. You just... stop playing. That's your punishment for not being skilled enough.
Shine Thief is brand new. In this mode, a Shine Sprite is placed on the map and anyone can grab it. If a player is holding the Shine Sprite, the timer counts down from 60. If you get hit while holding the Shine Sprite, you drop the Shine Sprite and the timer stops counting down, but it does pick up from where it left off if someone picks up the Shine Sprite again, whether it's that same person or someone else. And if the timer had less than 15 seconds on it when a player drops the Shine Sprite, it jumps back up to 15. When the timer hits 0, whoever is holding the Shine Sprite wins.
And lastly, we have Bob-Omb Blast. In this mode, the only items are Bob-Ombs, but unlike normal Bob-Ombs in the racing mode, these are special Bob-Ombs that are color-coded to the player who picked them up, and their explosions will not damage the player who picked them up. Additionally, you can hold up to 10 of them at once. You win the game by getting 4 points, or, in 2-player mode, 3 points. Each time you hit a player, you gain a point, but each time you get hit yourself, you lose a point, if you have any.
Mario Kart DS (DS)
Mario Kart DS introduced something that has been sorely needed in Battle Mode for a long time now: the ability to play with computer players. Yeah, prior to this, you had to get together with a bunch of your friends or family members just to play Battle Mode.
I should note that the maximum number of players has been increased from 4 to 8 now.
There are two different gameplay modes here: Balloon Battle and Shine Runners.
Balloon Battle is different now. Rather than starting with 3 balloons, you now start with 5 balloons, but only 1 is inflated. If you run out of inflated balloons, even if you still have some in reserve that you can inflate later... you are eliminated. So how do you inflate these balloons? By blowing into your DS's microphone. That sounds awfully lame and gimmicky, but it's actually pretty strategic and interesting, since the odds of getting good items increases if you have fewer inflated balloons, so you can opt to just... never inflate your balloons, and get good items, at the cost of being EXTREMELY prone to being eliminated. Or you can inflate all of your balloons to be safely in the game, at the cost of getting worse items. Trying to balance these is... quite interesting.
So, what happens if you're eliminated this time? Well, you come back as a ghost, and you are able to place item boxes on the map for the other players to pick up. That's a lot lamer than the Bomb Car, but it's better than nothing.
And now we look at the other mode, Shine Runners. In this mode, you need to collect the Shine Sprites that are placed throughout the map. Getting hit will cause you to drop one, which anyone can then pick up. When time runs out... the player(s) with the fewest number of Shine Sprites are eliminated, and then the game continues.
Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
Mario Kart Wii... was when Battle Mode decided to take a nosedive in the quality department. In fact... if we look purely at the game's rules and not at the quality of the battle maps themselves, the Wii version is still, to this day, unquestionably the worst.
So... let's start with Balloon Battle. First of all, the number of players is now up to 12. That's it for positives. Every single other thing in this mode is A LOT worse. For starters, you no longer get eliminated when you lose all of your balloons, so what's the point? Well, you gain 1 point each time you hit a player, and if you lose all of your balloons, you lose 1 point, and then you respawn with 3 more balloons. Whoever has the most points when time runs out wins.
This is SIGNIFICANTLY worse. I get that it prevents players from being eliminated, but it just leads to less intense moments. It's not like the elimination was ever an issue anyways, as previous Mario Kart games found ways around that by giving eliminated players something to do.
Oh, and only losing 1 point for being eliminated? That's basically nothing. So there's no reason not to go for high-risk plays.
So... that sounds pretty bad, right? Well... it gets worse. Mario Kart Wii introduced the ability to play on teams, and have your teams work together to get a combined score. That's honestly nice... if it were added to the regular gameplay options. But no. In this version, teams aren't just another option, they are the ONLY way to play. You are REQUIRED to play with 12 players, and play a 6-vs-6 game.
This means that you can be the best player in the world, and if your teammates just so happen to suck, they can drag you down, and you can lose this game through no fault of your own. Absolutely terrible.
Oh, and to make it worse, a Wii can only have up to 4 controllers connected to it at a time, so unless you are playing online with other Wiis, a thing that has been impossible to do since the Wii's online servers were shut down in 2014 by the way, you are required to have computer players on your team. Which... is just not fun.
Yeah, this is a train wreck compared to what came before it.
Oh, and, by the way, it should be obvious from the fact that the Wii has no microphone, but uh... that gimmick on the DS of having balloons in reserve that you can inflate by blowing into the microphone? That's gone now. You're back to just starting with 3 balloons, like in previous games.
Mario Kart Wii does have one more mode that you can play, and that's Coin Runners.
In Coin Runners, you just go around collecting coins, and whoever has the most coins when time runs out wins. You lose coins if you get hit. That's literally it. Oh, except it faces the same problems as Balloon Battle, with you being forced to play in teams, and being forced to play with computers. Not fun.
Mario Kart 7 (3DS)
Mario Kart 7 brings us back down to a maximum of 8 players. Thankfully, you're no longer forced to be on teams, and teams are now just an optional feature. Which is how it should be.
Balloon Battle is still on the stupid Wii version's rules, where you get points based on your hits and then you just need to have the most points when time runs out. So... the only plus is that you're no longer stuck on teams, but elimination is still better than this. That said, they did address one concern with the Wii version. In the Wii version, when you lost all of your balloons, you only lost 1 point, which is negligible. But now, you lose half of your points. That makes losing your balloons actually pretty costly, so this is a good change. But you still respawn afterwards and can keep playing, so it's not as good as it was pre-Wii.
Coin Runners is also back, and yet again... it's better in the sense that you're no longer stuck on teams. It's still not a fun mode at all, but hey, better than it was in Wii. But that said... they did make a very strange gameplay change that makes this one a bit worse than it would have been without having made that change. Now, your coin count maxes out at 10, and you cannot pick up coins after you have 10. This is really stupid, since it means that once you have 10, you can just... go hide somewhere and not engage with the other players at all after that. There's no reason to keep playing at that point. Really lame.
Mario Kart 8 (Wii U)
Welcome to what is probably the worst Battle Mode in the series.
So... let's start with the thing that I kinda haven't been talking about at all, because it hasn't really been relevant: the battle maps.
This game... doesn't have any. Instead, you just have to play Battle Mode on the standard race tracks. This is an exceptionally bad choice. It is far worse than ANY of the bad decisions that we've seen so far. The race tracks were very very clearly not designed for battling. They were designed for racing. It is really annoying to travel around a long race course trying to find other players. It's just... such a bad decision.
And yet? That's not even the only bad thing about this Battle Mode. Sure, it's the worst thing that's happened, but it's not the only bad one.
So... ever since Mario Kart: Double Dash!! on GameCube, every game has offered multiple battle modes to choose from. This game put a stop to that and limits you to just Balloon Battle again. That... is pathetic. And we're far from done here.
So, Balloon Battle has two ways that it has been played in the past. In the early titles, it was elimination-based, and you won by being the last man standing. In the later titles, it was score-based, and you won by getting the most hits on other players.
Most people prefer the elimination-based mode, since it leads to more intense gameplay, but I can see the argument for preferring the score-based mode, since it leads to not having to sit around when your friends keep playing.
But Mario Kart 8... tries to combine both of these rulesets together, except it takes only the worst elements of each. In Mario Kart 8, you are still playing the score-based mode, except that if you lose all of your balloons, you are eliminated.
Yeah, that is the worst of both worlds.
This does mean that you can still win after being eliminated, if the number of points you had prior to your elimination is just so high that no one can surpass it before time runs out. Which... just feels wrong.
I should note that when you are eliminated, you do come back as a ghost, and as a ghost, you can still attack other players to pop their balloons, but you will no longer receive points for doing so.
The only positive that I can say is that they bumped the maximum number of players back up to 12 again.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch)
So, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe comes along, as an upgraded version of Mario Kart 8. Now, it has all the DLC built-in and it also has a ton of new characters, some slight alterations to gameplay mechanics to make it more fun, and it even has DLC of its own. This is definitely the definitive way to play Mario Kart 8.
And... one area where they improved upon was Battle Mode... because... yeah, that was sorely needed.
For starters, there's actual battle maps this time! Yay! These battle maps are also among the best in the entire series so far.
But then... on top of that... we got five different modes to play, the most of any in the series so far. There's Balloon Battle, Renegade Roundup, Bob-Omb Blast, Coin Runners, and Shine Thief.
Balloon Battle works pretty much identically to how it did in Mario Kart 7, though you now start with 5 balloons instead of just 3 balloons. That's the only difference.
Renegade Roundup is our only mode that's completely new, and it replaces Shine Runners from the DS version, which is the only previous mode that they didn't bring back. This mode is forced onto teams, with asymmetric gameplay. One team is The Authorities and the other is The Renegades. The Authorities are given Piranha Plants to attack The Renegades with. If a member of The Renegades is successfully captured by a Piranha Plant in this manner, they are placed in a small cage on the map. However, a key switch is below each cage. If a member of The Renegades drives over this key switch, then the cage is opened, and all of The Renegades within are freed to drive around again and evade The Authorities. If time runs out, then The Renegades win, for successfully evading The Authorities for so long. But if every single member of The Renegades is in a cage, then The Authorities win, for having successfully captured all of The Renegades.
Bob-Omb Blast is really different from how it was in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. You still get Bob-Ombs as your only items, and you still get them color-coded to match you, with you being immune to explosions from your own Bob-Ombs, and you can still hold up to 10 at a time. But... that's where the similarities end. In Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, you were trying to use these Bob-Ombs to score points. But in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe... this is literally just Balloon Battle, except with only Bob-Ombs. It's still a lot of fun though.
Coin Runners is more-or-less the same as it was in Mario Kart 7, except that you're no longer limited to just 10 coins. That's a good change, but it's still easily the weakest of the five battle modes in this game.
And then we have Shine Thief, which also returns from Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. This also got some considerable changes. In Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, there was a single global timer that started at 60, and never less than 15. But here, each player has their own timer that starts at 20. When you are holding the Shine Sprite, your timer counts down. If you get hit and you drop the Shine Sprite, but you pick it up again later in the match, you continue to count down from where you left off. When your timer hits 0, you win.
So... what do I think is the best Battle Mode? Well, it's hard to say. In terms of gameplay rules alone, I think I prefer the Super Circuit version of Balloon Battle the most. But looking at the battle maps... 64, DS, and 8 Deluxe all have some stellar maps. Also, we have to keep in mind that you can't play any of the first four Mario Kart games in Battle Mode in single-player, and if you do play multiplayer these days... well... probably the only people who are still playing older games' Battle Modes are those who are obsessed and are scarily good at them. That said... I think that the true winner, in my mind, has to be 8 Deluxe, just for the sheer variety of modes that you can play. Yeah, it sucks that they don't have an elimination-based Balloon Battle, but... still. This has pretty much everything else. As for which one I think is the worst, it's a tough call between Wii and 8. 8 made what is probably the dumbest decision that the series ever made, what with not having battle maps at all. But Wii made MULTIPLE bad decisions. Not only did they have the stupidest ruleset of all, forcing you into teams, but also... they were the ones who started the trend of neutering Balloon Battle to make it score-based instead of elimination-based. I think I still find 8 to be worse, but it is a very close call.
And what of the future of this series? Well... my ideal way to play would be to have a setting that you can toggle on and off, which lets you choose between having Balloon Battle be either based on scoring or based on elimination. That way, you can have the best of both worlds, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this happens in the next Mario Kart game.
So it should come as no surprise that they have a mode dedicated just to battling each other, Battle Mode. Unlike the standard racing mode, the way you play battle mode is... radically different between each of the Mario Kart games. Giving a brief overview is basically impossible. The best that I can do is say that these take place on battle maps, which are wide open areas to drive around in, without having a dedicated "finish line", and you use items to attack each other. Even that explanation isn't accurate to one version of this...
So yeah, basically impossible to describe. So instead, I thought I'd make a quick little retrospective, showing off each game's Battle Mode and explain how each one works. Because, believe it or not... there's A TON of debate over which ones are the best and which ones are the worst. Everyone seems to have their own ranking that is unique to them.
So, let's take a look at each one.
Super Mario Kart (SNES)
So... the first Mario Kart game is on the SNES... which means that it was quite limited due to the hardware.
Case in point, the SNES only has two controller ports, so you can only do Battle Mode with two people, and not any more than that.
In this game, the way that Battle Mode works is that each player has three balloons and when you get hit, then one of your balloons is popped. If all of your balloons are popped, you lose.
That's it, that's the whole mode.
But... it's surprisingly not the worst. A lot of modern consoles struggle to make a Battle Mode this good... because... yeah, enjoy this while it lasts, it's gonna get butchered.
One other thing of note is that, in the SNES version, the Battle Mode is EXCLUSIVELY two-player. You cannot play this in single-player against a computer. Modern Mario Kart games do let you do this, but also let you disable computer players if you wish, so this is definitely dated in that regard.
Mario Kart 64 (Nintendo 64)
Mario Kart 64 is often cited as being the best version of Mario Kart's Battle Mode.
It's pretty much the same as Super Mario Kart on SNES, but with one key difference: you can now play with up to 4 players.
This creates a conundrum, as... what happens when a player is eliminated? Do they just have to sit there and watch and do nothing as their friends have all the fun?
Well, no. They actually thought of that.
When a player is eliminated, they turn into a Bomb Car. The Bomb Car cannot win the match, but if they crash themselves into another player, they will explode, thereby popping one of that player's balloons. The Bomb Car also gets stunned if they themselves are attacked. So they can still influence the match, despite no longer being able to win it.
But... wait. Won't that give too much control to the players who aren't playing anymore? No. Because... after a Bomb Car explodes once, they don't respawn. They are out of the game for real at that point. It prevents them from influencing the match too heavily, while still progressing the game along to try to reach a conclusion.
Mario Kart: Super Circuit (Game Boy Advance)
Moving on to Mario Kart: Super Circuit, this is nearly identical to Mario Kart 64 in terms of the ruleset (though the battle maps for Mario Kart 64 are better).
The one difference is that instead of turning into a Bomb Car, you turn into an actual Bomb. But... that's purely cosmetic, right? No. The difference is that when the Bomb explodes... it can respawn, and continue to affect the match afterwards.
The other difference is that... getting hit by an item while you are a Bomb will cause you to explode, thereby necessitating you to respawn, so getting hit is A LOT more detrimental in this version.
Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (GameCube)
So, Mario Kart: Double Dash!! does something new with its Battle Mode. There are now three different rulesets that you can choose between: Balloon Battle, Shine Thief, and Bob-Omb Blast.
Balloon Battle is the standard Battle Mode that the previous games have had. Except this time... if you are eliminated... you don't come back as a Bomb or a Bomb Car. You just... stop playing. That's your punishment for not being skilled enough.
Shine Thief is brand new. In this mode, a Shine Sprite is placed on the map and anyone can grab it. If a player is holding the Shine Sprite, the timer counts down from 60. If you get hit while holding the Shine Sprite, you drop the Shine Sprite and the timer stops counting down, but it does pick up from where it left off if someone picks up the Shine Sprite again, whether it's that same person or someone else. And if the timer had less than 15 seconds on it when a player drops the Shine Sprite, it jumps back up to 15. When the timer hits 0, whoever is holding the Shine Sprite wins.
And lastly, we have Bob-Omb Blast. In this mode, the only items are Bob-Ombs, but unlike normal Bob-Ombs in the racing mode, these are special Bob-Ombs that are color-coded to the player who picked them up, and their explosions will not damage the player who picked them up. Additionally, you can hold up to 10 of them at once. You win the game by getting 4 points, or, in 2-player mode, 3 points. Each time you hit a player, you gain a point, but each time you get hit yourself, you lose a point, if you have any.
Mario Kart DS (DS)
Mario Kart DS introduced something that has been sorely needed in Battle Mode for a long time now: the ability to play with computer players. Yeah, prior to this, you had to get together with a bunch of your friends or family members just to play Battle Mode.
I should note that the maximum number of players has been increased from 4 to 8 now.
There are two different gameplay modes here: Balloon Battle and Shine Runners.
Balloon Battle is different now. Rather than starting with 3 balloons, you now start with 5 balloons, but only 1 is inflated. If you run out of inflated balloons, even if you still have some in reserve that you can inflate later... you are eliminated. So how do you inflate these balloons? By blowing into your DS's microphone. That sounds awfully lame and gimmicky, but it's actually pretty strategic and interesting, since the odds of getting good items increases if you have fewer inflated balloons, so you can opt to just... never inflate your balloons, and get good items, at the cost of being EXTREMELY prone to being eliminated. Or you can inflate all of your balloons to be safely in the game, at the cost of getting worse items. Trying to balance these is... quite interesting.
So, what happens if you're eliminated this time? Well, you come back as a ghost, and you are able to place item boxes on the map for the other players to pick up. That's a lot lamer than the Bomb Car, but it's better than nothing.
And now we look at the other mode, Shine Runners. In this mode, you need to collect the Shine Sprites that are placed throughout the map. Getting hit will cause you to drop one, which anyone can then pick up. When time runs out... the player(s) with the fewest number of Shine Sprites are eliminated, and then the game continues.
Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
Mario Kart Wii... was when Battle Mode decided to take a nosedive in the quality department. In fact... if we look purely at the game's rules and not at the quality of the battle maps themselves, the Wii version is still, to this day, unquestionably the worst.
So... let's start with Balloon Battle. First of all, the number of players is now up to 12. That's it for positives. Every single other thing in this mode is A LOT worse. For starters, you no longer get eliminated when you lose all of your balloons, so what's the point? Well, you gain 1 point each time you hit a player, and if you lose all of your balloons, you lose 1 point, and then you respawn with 3 more balloons. Whoever has the most points when time runs out wins.
This is SIGNIFICANTLY worse. I get that it prevents players from being eliminated, but it just leads to less intense moments. It's not like the elimination was ever an issue anyways, as previous Mario Kart games found ways around that by giving eliminated players something to do.
Oh, and only losing 1 point for being eliminated? That's basically nothing. So there's no reason not to go for high-risk plays.
So... that sounds pretty bad, right? Well... it gets worse. Mario Kart Wii introduced the ability to play on teams, and have your teams work together to get a combined score. That's honestly nice... if it were added to the regular gameplay options. But no. In this version, teams aren't just another option, they are the ONLY way to play. You are REQUIRED to play with 12 players, and play a 6-vs-6 game.
This means that you can be the best player in the world, and if your teammates just so happen to suck, they can drag you down, and you can lose this game through no fault of your own. Absolutely terrible.
Oh, and to make it worse, a Wii can only have up to 4 controllers connected to it at a time, so unless you are playing online with other Wiis, a thing that has been impossible to do since the Wii's online servers were shut down in 2014 by the way, you are required to have computer players on your team. Which... is just not fun.
Yeah, this is a train wreck compared to what came before it.
Oh, and, by the way, it should be obvious from the fact that the Wii has no microphone, but uh... that gimmick on the DS of having balloons in reserve that you can inflate by blowing into the microphone? That's gone now. You're back to just starting with 3 balloons, like in previous games.
Mario Kart Wii does have one more mode that you can play, and that's Coin Runners.
In Coin Runners, you just go around collecting coins, and whoever has the most coins when time runs out wins. You lose coins if you get hit. That's literally it. Oh, except it faces the same problems as Balloon Battle, with you being forced to play in teams, and being forced to play with computers. Not fun.
Mario Kart 7 (3DS)
Mario Kart 7 brings us back down to a maximum of 8 players. Thankfully, you're no longer forced to be on teams, and teams are now just an optional feature. Which is how it should be.
Balloon Battle is still on the stupid Wii version's rules, where you get points based on your hits and then you just need to have the most points when time runs out. So... the only plus is that you're no longer stuck on teams, but elimination is still better than this. That said, they did address one concern with the Wii version. In the Wii version, when you lost all of your balloons, you only lost 1 point, which is negligible. But now, you lose half of your points. That makes losing your balloons actually pretty costly, so this is a good change. But you still respawn afterwards and can keep playing, so it's not as good as it was pre-Wii.
Coin Runners is also back, and yet again... it's better in the sense that you're no longer stuck on teams. It's still not a fun mode at all, but hey, better than it was in Wii. But that said... they did make a very strange gameplay change that makes this one a bit worse than it would have been without having made that change. Now, your coin count maxes out at 10, and you cannot pick up coins after you have 10. This is really stupid, since it means that once you have 10, you can just... go hide somewhere and not engage with the other players at all after that. There's no reason to keep playing at that point. Really lame.
Mario Kart 8 (Wii U)
Welcome to what is probably the worst Battle Mode in the series.
So... let's start with the thing that I kinda haven't been talking about at all, because it hasn't really been relevant: the battle maps.
This game... doesn't have any. Instead, you just have to play Battle Mode on the standard race tracks. This is an exceptionally bad choice. It is far worse than ANY of the bad decisions that we've seen so far. The race tracks were very very clearly not designed for battling. They were designed for racing. It is really annoying to travel around a long race course trying to find other players. It's just... such a bad decision.
And yet? That's not even the only bad thing about this Battle Mode. Sure, it's the worst thing that's happened, but it's not the only bad one.
So... ever since Mario Kart: Double Dash!! on GameCube, every game has offered multiple battle modes to choose from. This game put a stop to that and limits you to just Balloon Battle again. That... is pathetic. And we're far from done here.
So, Balloon Battle has two ways that it has been played in the past. In the early titles, it was elimination-based, and you won by being the last man standing. In the later titles, it was score-based, and you won by getting the most hits on other players.
Most people prefer the elimination-based mode, since it leads to more intense gameplay, but I can see the argument for preferring the score-based mode, since it leads to not having to sit around when your friends keep playing.
But Mario Kart 8... tries to combine both of these rulesets together, except it takes only the worst elements of each. In Mario Kart 8, you are still playing the score-based mode, except that if you lose all of your balloons, you are eliminated.
Yeah, that is the worst of both worlds.
This does mean that you can still win after being eliminated, if the number of points you had prior to your elimination is just so high that no one can surpass it before time runs out. Which... just feels wrong.
I should note that when you are eliminated, you do come back as a ghost, and as a ghost, you can still attack other players to pop their balloons, but you will no longer receive points for doing so.
The only positive that I can say is that they bumped the maximum number of players back up to 12 again.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch)
So, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe comes along, as an upgraded version of Mario Kart 8. Now, it has all the DLC built-in and it also has a ton of new characters, some slight alterations to gameplay mechanics to make it more fun, and it even has DLC of its own. This is definitely the definitive way to play Mario Kart 8.
And... one area where they improved upon was Battle Mode... because... yeah, that was sorely needed.
For starters, there's actual battle maps this time! Yay! These battle maps are also among the best in the entire series so far.
But then... on top of that... we got five different modes to play, the most of any in the series so far. There's Balloon Battle, Renegade Roundup, Bob-Omb Blast, Coin Runners, and Shine Thief.
Balloon Battle works pretty much identically to how it did in Mario Kart 7, though you now start with 5 balloons instead of just 3 balloons. That's the only difference.
Renegade Roundup is our only mode that's completely new, and it replaces Shine Runners from the DS version, which is the only previous mode that they didn't bring back. This mode is forced onto teams, with asymmetric gameplay. One team is The Authorities and the other is The Renegades. The Authorities are given Piranha Plants to attack The Renegades with. If a member of The Renegades is successfully captured by a Piranha Plant in this manner, they are placed in a small cage on the map. However, a key switch is below each cage. If a member of The Renegades drives over this key switch, then the cage is opened, and all of The Renegades within are freed to drive around again and evade The Authorities. If time runs out, then The Renegades win, for successfully evading The Authorities for so long. But if every single member of The Renegades is in a cage, then The Authorities win, for having successfully captured all of The Renegades.
Bob-Omb Blast is really different from how it was in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. You still get Bob-Ombs as your only items, and you still get them color-coded to match you, with you being immune to explosions from your own Bob-Ombs, and you can still hold up to 10 at a time. But... that's where the similarities end. In Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, you were trying to use these Bob-Ombs to score points. But in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe... this is literally just Balloon Battle, except with only Bob-Ombs. It's still a lot of fun though.
Coin Runners is more-or-less the same as it was in Mario Kart 7, except that you're no longer limited to just 10 coins. That's a good change, but it's still easily the weakest of the five battle modes in this game.
And then we have Shine Thief, which also returns from Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. This also got some considerable changes. In Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, there was a single global timer that started at 60, and never less than 15. But here, each player has their own timer that starts at 20. When you are holding the Shine Sprite, your timer counts down. If you get hit and you drop the Shine Sprite, but you pick it up again later in the match, you continue to count down from where you left off. When your timer hits 0, you win.
So... what do I think is the best Battle Mode? Well, it's hard to say. In terms of gameplay rules alone, I think I prefer the Super Circuit version of Balloon Battle the most. But looking at the battle maps... 64, DS, and 8 Deluxe all have some stellar maps. Also, we have to keep in mind that you can't play any of the first four Mario Kart games in Battle Mode in single-player, and if you do play multiplayer these days... well... probably the only people who are still playing older games' Battle Modes are those who are obsessed and are scarily good at them. That said... I think that the true winner, in my mind, has to be 8 Deluxe, just for the sheer variety of modes that you can play. Yeah, it sucks that they don't have an elimination-based Balloon Battle, but... still. This has pretty much everything else. As for which one I think is the worst, it's a tough call between Wii and 8. 8 made what is probably the dumbest decision that the series ever made, what with not having battle maps at all. But Wii made MULTIPLE bad decisions. Not only did they have the stupidest ruleset of all, forcing you into teams, but also... they were the ones who started the trend of neutering Balloon Battle to make it score-based instead of elimination-based. I think I still find 8 to be worse, but it is a very close call.
And what of the future of this series? Well... my ideal way to play would be to have a setting that you can toggle on and off, which lets you choose between having Balloon Battle be either based on scoring or based on elimination. That way, you can have the best of both worlds, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this happens in the next Mario Kart game.