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What Those Items In Mario Kart 8 Are Really For

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Mario Kart 8 is a great game. But like many great Nintendo games, there are certain things in it that seem to exist for no good reason. Or any reason, really. They're just sort of...there.

For something? Maybe? I have no idea. But man, those splashes of squid ink can really be irritating sometimes.

Dorkly drew up a list of its eight greatest pet peeves with the new Mario Kart arsenal this week. These will hit close to home for anyone who's been through a bittersweet moment when, say, the excitement of getting a Crazy Eight switches to complete and utter confusion about how you're actually supposed to use it:

"I think I just boosted into my own bomb blast." That pretty much sums it up.

I don't entirely agree with all of these. But Dorkly really, really nails the gold coin. I've been playing this game pretty much nonstop since it came out, and I still can't tell you what the coins actually do during the races. Word is, that they make you slightly faster. But if they do, then the boost is so subtle that I still haven't actually noticed it.

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Maybe there's something amazing, coin-wise, in the works for a future update that Nintendo hasn't clued us into yet. Or maybe they're just a cheap trick to divert our attention towards collecting coins when we should just be focusing on getting ahead of whoever's leading the pack.

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In either case: can't I just have Donkey Kong's giant banana from Double Dash again instead? Pretty please?

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You can read more Dorkly comics here.

To contact the author of this post, write to yannick.lejacq@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter at @YannickLeJacq.