Even after 19 years, Mario Kart DS speedrunners are still finding new ways to beat the game

It’s been 19 years since the first Mario Kart DS race. That’s an incredibly long time, and I think we’ll need a break to fully recover. But while we’re going crazy over how many years have passed, take a look at this: speedrunners have found a few new ways to get around the DS’s circuits that weren’t there before (thanks, Gaming Reinvented).

The big deal is on the Waluigi Pinball track, where speedrunner iMathII seems to have shown that a shortcut that was first found in tool-assisted speedruns (TAS) is actually possible for humans. The driver has to hit a part of the spiral track just right to pull off this tricky move. If they do it right, the kart is thrown across a large part of the track and lands by the pinball bumpers at the end of the lap. In the video above, you can see it work.

So it turns out that this move can also be used on a few other tracks. A similar method has been used in tool-assisted runs to skip large parts of the Luigi’s Mansion circuit, and speedrunner @MK_Dasher says it can also be used on Delfino Square.

After 10 years, a new shortcut has been discovered in Mario Kart DS! For now, this new bonking strategy works on Waluigi Pinball, Luigi's Mansion, and Delfino Square. Congratulations to Robert McKinnon for achieving the first world record using this! https://t.co/HllCvi832M

— MKDasher (@MK_Dasher) April 13, 2024

As of right now, these later examples only seem to be available in the tool-assisted realm. But if there’s one thing that recent developments in the Mario Maker speedrunning community have taught us, it’s that professionals will soon use these shortcuts.