Click here to view the raw data collected for this video
Behind the Scenes
With the overwhelming success of Blue Yourself, I decided to make the history video for 48 Tracks, 200cc, items in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. I had no idea that Blue Yourself would get so popular. I made a comment in the video asking if people wanted to see more videos like this, just so I could gauge what the interest was. Well, yeah. A LOT of people wanted more. I had to come up with my next idea, which honestly, I wasn’t prepared for. I thought of doing the 48 tracks, 200cc, NO items category because that category has a lot of competition. Would be a fun way to showcase driving line perfection in a video. And so, I began to get my plans for it.
Funny enough, SimLola had actually starting making a document with the history of the runs and whatnot. But SimLola had started doing it for the ITEMS category, not the no-items category. I laughed a bit to myself and looked over it. I thought to myself, “you know, maybe the items category wouldn’t be so bad after all”. And after finally finding all of the world records, I realized there was an amazing story to tell. I realized I could collect a TON of data for this video to make it super interesting. That’s when I decided to go through each and every world record and track every single time a runner was hit by an item or had a mishap.
Going through 20 world records at the time was a lot. Each of those were about an hour and half. Multiply that by 20 runs and there’s 30 hours of watching runs alone. Though, I watched the runs on 2x speed. When tracking and making the data spreadsheet, I’d say it took anywhere from 17-19 hours just to collect the data. As I was collecting the data, I was thinking of all the different ideas I could do. But then I remember this was a video about the world record history. Oops. However, I did know of one person who would really like this data, and that was Bayesic. He helped me calculate the probabilities of a perfect RNG run, which was hilarious to know that the odds are so incredibly low. I figured it would be a cool idea to make the raw data available for anyone to use. I’m curious to see if anyone takes that data and makes a video about it. Who knows.
Once I had all of that data, it WAS hard not to play with it myself. I started making graphs and cool charts. One thing I didn’t mention in the video that I really wanted to was that if you look at the number of times runners were hit by a blue shell, it trends downwards as runs got improved. I think this has to do with item manipulation and how consistent runners would try to cycle through items until they had a super horn. Lightning was pretty consistent throughout runs. Which confirms the blue shell theory – you can’t protect yourself from lightning.
The script took longer than I thought to make, even though it was actually shorter than the Blue Yourself script. Not sure why. Maybe because I was busy with other things and also lazy to work on it. Then the booster tracks came out and I really wanted to play those. But I know that if I started playing those, I wouldn’t get the video done at all. So, I started making the video a bit more of a priority.
Finally got the script done. And if you’ve watched the video by now, you know what happens next. I reached out the Pianist15 to see if he had any old runs laying around so that we could collect data from it to help with Bayesic’s calculation for a perfect run. He didn’t have any old runs so he goes ahead and does a no reset run. AND HE GETS THE WORLD RECORD. LIKE. WHAT?! The story of this category just got even more interesting. But Pianist16 just kept doing those runs and finally getting another world record, the one that is currently triumphant. This alone made me panic. I was thinking to myself “oh my god, PLEASE no one get a world record.” because this was the perfect time to release the video. First sub 1:29 RTA, first sub 1:09 IGT, gets the WR from no reset ones, and then retires shortly after. The guy finishes while on top which is extremely respectable. Pianist, if you’re reading this, congrats again. You’ve made a huge difference in the MK8DX community.
Once the script was done and Pianist made the latest WR, I sent it off to my good friend BigBootyBode once again. He completely revitalizes the script and corrects my awful grammar. Thanks, my dude. The feeling of getting that script back is an awesome feeling. Reading it over makes my motivation go back to 100% and I immediately went to go start the video editing. The video editing, this time around compared to Blue Yourself, also took much longer this time around. I didn’t really have many videos, pictures, or visuals to compliment the script. While tracking all of the items and mishaps in the world records, I didn’t think to stop and also track the highlights of them. So I spent lots of time going through those WRs and seeing what was worthy of including inside the history video. There also wasn’t a whole lot of Discord messages I could find either. The MK8DX server had reorganized all their channels and I found it harder to look up past/old comments. Oh well, I suppose.
I started the video editing on August 8th and didn’t fully finish until about the day before I released the video. The video probably had about 4 or 5 different renders with something always different. I made some last-minute decisions to change a few things up, too. I guess if there’s enough interest, I can upload the drafts and progress on Discord or something. If you’re reading this and would like to see it, let me know. That also tells me if people are actually reading this blog lol.
At the end of the day, I think I made a great video. I would estimate probably 70 or so hours went into it. Blue Yourself I probably put in 40 hours or so. Not sure if will get as popular as Blue Yourself. Maybe the algorithm gods will help me out again, hard to say. Either way, I’m glad I’m able to document this wonderful piece of history in MK8DX. I’m sure you’ll see make another video about this in 2030 that includes the rest of the 48 new booster tracks.
A question I keep asking myself is what do I want to with my YouTube channel. In the past, I would just upload any of my personal bests or world records I achieved in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe or Army Men Sarge’s Heroes 2. Do I want to continue doing that? A part of me is telling me no, because all these people who’ve subscribed are expecting more history videos. A friend of mine told me to upload whatever I want and just make playlists on my channel by category. I think that’s a great idea. It also got me thinking what kind of history videos I want to do in the future. I think I’ll definitely continue making Mario Kart 8 Deluxe videos, as it’s close and dear to my heart. But I think I’m going to start expanding with other games. I’ve seen a handful of comments suggesting I do the history of meme speedruns. I think that’s a hilarious idea and I think I know the perfect run to start that with. Hopefully this idea doesn’t get me banned like how it did in the speedrun. 😉
– Skilloz