Mario Kart 8 Guide How To Drive
Trackside Assistance
Every course features specialized panels or obstacles that actually help boost your speed, or assist in overtaking, attacking, and defending yourself against other racers.
Dash Panels
Dash panels help send you flying across the course at high speed. Occasionally, you’ll find dash panels on ramps to help extend how far you go from the ramp. In some cases, the dash panels are on moving platforms and might require you to do some fancy driving in order to hit them. Ironically, sometimes taking a route indicated by dash panels is not the fastest route through a track.
Ramps
Ramps are either very obvious constructs placed on sections of a course, or they can be seemingly innocuous parts of the environment, like the crests of hills formed by a track being rocked by shockwaves or pipes laying lengthwise across the ground. You can Jump Boost off a ramp for extra speed.
Glide Ramps
A glide ramp will always be found before any mandatory gliding sections of a course, but some shortcuts in the game are only possible due to glide ramps placed off the beaten path. Gliding can help you bypass more complex parts of a course, or avoid obstacles and off-road sections.
Antigravity Panels
Antigravity panels are found before the crazier sections of a course, but they also help enable alternate routes. Remember that the handling of your vehicle changes when under the effects of antigravity, so be prepared to compensate for that.
Spin Boost Pillars
Found on antigravity roads, these pillars provide the same Spin Boost you get when making contact with another racer on these sections of a track. However, you lose some control of your vehicle while enjoying the boost provided by a Spin Boost pillar. Spin Boost pillars don’t share the same appearance across all the tracks they appear on, but they all do the same thing.
Coins
Coins are spread out throughout every course in Mario Kart 8. Collecting a Coin provides a boost to your maximum top speed. At ten Coins, you reach your maximum potential speed. Just because you’ve hit the ten Coin cap doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pick up more during a Grand Prix race. You not only want Coins for yourself—you want to deny them to your rivals! However, during a Time Trial, you don’t want to go out of your way to collect Coins once you’ve reached the maximum. Concentrating on a good racing line is more important.
Coins regenerate on a course after a short time in most game modes. However, in Time Trials Coins do NOT regenerate after being collected.
Item Boxes
Appearing in all game modes outside of Time Trials, Item Boxes contain your primary offense and defense against other racers on the track. Like with Coins, you not only want Item Boxes for yourself, you also want to deny your enemies a chance at items. As with Coins, Item Boxes regenerate after a short period of time.