| Mr Khan said: Without Blue Shells, the system is rigged in favor of player 1, because he or she can usually (Mario Kart DS was the exception here) defend against Red Shells and then has nothing else to worry about except the driving. All positions after that have to worry about the driving *and* the other players. Blue Shells create statistical anomalies that we all remember more vividly than how the best player usually wins most of his/her races (all of us being "the best player" if we play in single player at some point), so the minority of races or Cups that we each have lost due to an ill-timed Blue Shell make us more bitter about those items. A legitimate gripe about the Blue Shell that Nintendo has finally rectified was in Double Dash, DS, and Wii, where the shell grew wings and would *only* hurt the 1st-place-racer, and maybe numbers two and three if everyone was jockeying for position at the moment of impact. That made it an item that was useless for the caster outside of the purposes of spite (while still serving its role in making sure player 1 always has some pressure on them). Kart 7 made it low-flying again, so there's a decent chance of it ramming other people out of the way for you. |
Not just blue shells. First place has 0% chance of getting anything in Mario Kart 64 and beyond other than green shells, banana peels, and bombs. You have the chance to get any item while in second place and the chance only increases the further back in rank you are. Sandbagging so you can continue getting good items and holding onto them and then pulling into first place at the end and using the good item you've got to guarantee your victory isn't very fun.
Yes it's a family friendly game, but what's the point in having competitive multiplayer if you have to purposefully play worse to guarantee a win?
The only other game I've played that does this same thing is Split/Second, where first place is at a disadvantage on tracks with two or more shortcuts since it takes a full bar to activate a shortcut, so after first place activates a shortcut, players following first place get to use the shortcut or activate the second shortcut while first place is already within the shortcut. The difference between Split/Second and Mario Kart is that it's something they overlooked with Split/Second while with Mario Kart the game is designed to penalize the winning player.
