The ancient Art of Snaking

With its first true implementation of an online mode Nintendo has created a very unique game with Mario Kart DS. It does not only feature a mission mode, but also allowed to activate mini-boosts by simply steering left then right 2 times.

Compared to the way drifting worked in previous instalments and those that followed, this allowed for a very interesting way to race. Since you didnt have to wait a few seconds for the boost to activate, your best bet was to choose a character with a low drift stat. This allowed you to rapidly activate mini-boosts, while maintaining a straight line.

By alternating between left curved drifts and right curved drifts, of which you needed to quickly activate the boost, you created a wave-like line on the courses. Which is why this technique was called "Snaking", you were moving like a snake across the map.

Mario Kart DS's Online Mode was played at 100cc, so you could squeeze in 40 to 80 mini-boosts into a race. So the better you knew the tracks, the more you could make use of the miniboost. As you might imagine, online races were especially vicious with the best people lining up one boost after the other, while still attacking with items and fending attacks off. Item Warfare turned out especially hard, since you could not drag an item behind you, so in order to block incoming red shells you had to line up in a straight line and shoot your item backwards. While in offline mode you could simply drag an item behind you.

This unique online-game had died with the end of online-play in 2014, but perhaps you will enjoy a bit of its old glory by watching this veteran of the ancient Art of Snaking.

Видео The ancient Art of Snaking канала Maebbie