Mario Kart 8 Deluxe recently became the best selling racing game of all time in the United States. To celebrate, I wanted to find the best racer, karts, or combination for every installment of Mario Kart. If you'd like to see the breakdown for each game then keep reading. If you don't have the time to read about 9 different games don't worry, there's a tldr at the bottom.
First off, let's explain where I got the data from. There's two types of world records in Mario Kart, speed runs and time trials. The speed run records rank the players with the shortest time going through multiple courses or cups. In these races the player has to compete with other computers and items. Whereas, in time trials the player races against a ghost, or a save file of a previous time trial. In this mode there are no other computers to race against and no items. I think in a truly competitive sense the speed run combinations are a better indicator of the "meta." Having to deal with items and other competitors is much more reminiscent of racing against other people. Having said that, I still included the data for the time trial combinations to have a clearer picture of both game modes. So between the records and attempts for both game modes I watched 1,110 different runs across 9 games.
Super Mario Kart
Super Mario Kart is the first game in the series. It was released for the Super Nintendo in 1992 and established the formula that all future iterations would follow. The game featured 8 racers, but specific pairs of racers shared the exact same stats. For example, Bowser and Donkey Kong Jr both had low acceleration and very high top speeds, the only difference between these two was their
appearance. As you can see in the diagram more than half of the speed runners preferred the heavy Bowser/DKJr over other characters.
The time trials for Super Mario Kart also favor the heaviest duo, but by a much larger margin. Turns out 100% of the time trials records are held by either a Bowser or a Donkey Kong Jr. This actually presented a problem for the graphic because I couldn't have a pie chart with only one category, so I had to break it into "Bowser" and "Also Bowser" to make it work.
Mario Kart 64 released in 1996 and featured the same number of racers as Super Mario Kart, but replaced Koopa Troopa and Donkey Kong Jr with Wario and Donkey Kong. This version of the game classifies the character in three groups, Light, Medium, and Heavy. Most people believe that all the racers in a specific class have the same stats, but that's not entirely true. The light class (Peach, Yoshi, and Toad) have the same speed and acceleration, but Toad has a different weight from the other two. Which means there are more characters than can force Toad to spin out of control, which makes him worse than the other two Light characters.
So as you can see, Yoshi and Peach are the clear favorites here with Toad in a distant second. Making Mario Kart 64 one of the rare games where the lighter characters perform better overall. And Bowser, the best racer of MK64, is seldomly used at high levels of competition.
The time trials for Mario Kart 64 tell a similar story to the speed run results. Once again the Light characters reign supreme with the majority using Yoshi or Peach with Toad right behind them.
Mario Kart Super Circuit
This GBA release has the same roster as Mario Kart 64, and it also has the same best characters. The same three light characters lead the pack here, except Peach and Toad share stats this time. And once again our good friend Bowser shows up on the list, but isn't number one. A quick disclaimer for this game. For all the other speed run records I looked at attempts for all of the courses, where the player races to get the lowest time on every map the game. However, for Super Circuit the speed running community seems to focus their efforts on just the Mushroom Cup. So while these results have fewer maps to go off of, there was way more data points to use with just the Mushroom Cup.
This is actually the only game on this list where the number one record is not held by the most commonly used character. First place actually used Bowser for their winning run.
Super Circuit is the first game we've seen where the time trial results are drastically different from the speed running ones. In this game Bowser has the slowest top speed, but he's the heaviest racer, which seems to work out well for time trials.
Mario Kart Double Dash!!
Double Dash is the first and only game that lets the player control two racers. This is also the first Mario Kart game that lets you pick more than just your racer, you're able to select your racers and vehicle. As with the previous two games, Light characters seem to do very well here, with the majority of people using Koopa Troopa, Paratroopa, Toad, or Toadette.
The Barrel Train seems to be the clear favorite here with over 80% of speed run attempts using it. It's used even more in the time trial mode with 100% of time trials records using it.
Mario Kart DS
The second handheld Mario Kart was released in 2005 and features quite a roster. On top of introducing Waluigi, Daisy, R.O.B. to the roster, all 13 characters have unique stats for the first time. That's right, there are no duplicate/clone characters in Mario Kart DS.
There seems to be some debate for picking the best driver. Most picked Yoshi, but Dry Bones was not far behind. There's definitely no debating the best vehicle in the game though, with almost 90% of racers opting to use the Egg1.
Dry Bones might have been second for the speed runs, but he's the most used character for time trials being picked by over two thirds of players. The ROB-BLS vehicle also doesn't do quite well in time trials with a little under two thirds picking it.
Mario Kart Wii
Moving onto the fan favorite, Mario Kart Wii was the first MK game to have online functionality, allowing casual players to get a glimpse at what combos the pros are using. I remember playing this game and the online lobbies being dominated by Funky Kongs, and these results just back that up.
If you watch a professional race in Mario Kart Wii every player is using Funky Kong with the Flame Runner. You think I'm joking? Check out the
Grand Finals of the 2020 World Cup, every player there is using this combo.
The time trials have a little bit more variety, but Funky Kong and the Flame Runner are still the most used combination in this game mode too.
Mario Kart 7
Mario Kart 7 added a lot more customization to the game, it ended up doubling the amount of customizable parts. In addition to the driver and vehicle, players can now pick their own tires and gliders. Despite the new depth of customization, top players still rallied behind the same meta combo.
Every vehicle has their own stats, but most characters, tires, and gliders will share their stats with some copycats. Metal Mario is the most commonly picked driver, but he shares the same stats with Bowser, Wario, and Honey Queen. If you'd like a list of all the parts that share stats that will be included in the list down at the bottom.
Nothing major changes between the speed runs and the time trials here. Metal Mario and B Dasher are still the favorites, but the time trial community prefers the Slick tires and the Beast glider over the Red Monster tires and Swooper glider that the speed runners like to use.
Mario Kart 8
Mario Kart 8 has a weird mechanic for one of their stats known as Acceleration Tiers. Essentially, what that means is that a combo that says its acceleration is 3.5 actually only has an in game acceleration of 3. For whatever the reason all of the decimals round down. After finding that out pro players liked to use Morton and the Blue Falcon. The Pipe Frame kart comes in a very close second in one of the closest splits we've seen so far.
The time trials also have to deal with the Acceleration Tiers, so must time trials ended up using the same build. While the speed run records used 9 different characters every single time trial record uses Morton.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Not only did the upgraded port of Mario Kart 8 did away with the acceleration tiers, it further split up copycat stats so that we have more unique drivers and vehicles. The most used character is in the Waluigi/Roy/Donkey Kong grouping (all three are statistically identical). I've heard rumors online of Waluigi being the better of the three because he has a smaller hurtbox, meaning because he's the skinniest of the group he's a physically smaller target for items to hit. I have not found any evidence to confirm this, but it might be something to consider.
Of the 119 total MK8Dx speed runs, 25 used the exact combination listed above. 25 out of 119 might not seem like a lot, but the next most common combination only showed up 7 times. The Waluigi/Mr. Scooty build is the definitive combination for this game, most time trial records use this combo as well.
Conclusion
So there you have it, the best characters and karts to use in every mainline Mario Kart game. If anyone is curious to see the actual numbers, I pulled the data from
SpeedRun.com,
Mario Kart World Records, and I've compiled all the data
here.
TLDR
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