Mario Kart's Blue Shell (officially, the Spiny Shell) is one of the most iconic items in video game history. It's also one of the most controversial. A mainstay of the series since Mario Kart 64, the Blue Shell is a laser-guided missile targeted at the player in first place. It is near-unavoidable, and completely unavoidable in older games. Every Mario Kart player knows the feeling of dread - and childlike injustice - that accompanies the Blue Shell's sudden, high-pitched siren whine, announcing an unceremonious end to your pleasant race lead. But a research project at Queen's University Belfast has asked a fascinating question about the Blue Shell: does it even work?

Of course, the Blue Shell works in a literal sense - it blows up first place's hopes and dreams with depressing accuracy. The question is whether it does what it's designed to do, and what people believe it does. And if it doesn't, then why is it such a core part of the game?

The Blue Shell's fame can disguise its unusual status in gaming: it's surprisingly rare for items in competitive multiplayer to specifically target the leader, let alone to incapacitate them for multiple seconds. "Isn't it [...] a little bit unfair?" Kotaku sceptically asked Hideki Konno, 'the man behind Mario Kart', back in 2011. Now, one answer would be that it doesn't have to be fair: 'unfair' game mechanics are deeply important to how many games function. Overly hard bosses, unforeseeable traps, and harsh punishments can help build a world, give a game a sense of risk and difficulty, and shape player responsiveness.

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Whether you have a bunch of free time or hardly any at all, whether you’re playing on console or PC, there are plenty of great games to obsess over right now. Our recommendations for what to play this weekend include everything from sci-fi thrillers and loot-driven action-RPGs to esoteric puzzle games and action…

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We’ve all, at one point or another in our time on the internet, seen a post or comment so mean, shitty, or just bad that we can’t help but start clacking the keys and writing up a response. It turns out, even Nintendo of America’s president—Doug Bowser—can’t always resist the siren song of hopping into the comments…

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The CEO of Level-5 - the studio behind the family-friendly Professor Layton series, Snack World and Ni no Kuni - has said he hopes to one day make a darker game with more violence and eroticism.

Speaking with Denfaminicogamer in a joint interview with Grasshopper Manufacture's Goichi Suda, Level-5's Akihiro Hino said he admired "creators who can release such edgy titles into the world", calling them "amazing" (translated by automaton).

This is, of course, the kind of game Suda's studio is known for, with titles such as No More Heroes and Lollipop Chainsaw to its name.

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Everyone has their favourite Mario Kart character to play as, but is there really a best option? A choice which will actually give you an edge to beat your rivals - to go just a little bit faster, or recover that little bit quicker?

Well, yes - some characters are mathmatically better than others. This is even true when you factor in the many different kart pieces - bodies, wheels and gliders - which you can mix and match to tweak your overall racer stat. So how do you pick?

According to a fasincating and beautifully put together piece of research by data scientist Antoine Mayerowitz, there are 703,560 different build options to choose from when you cater to all the different characters and kart pieces. But many of these are carbon copies of each other - so you can quickly whittle that down to just 25,704 distinct statistical options.

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Everyone has their favourite Mario Kart character to play as, but is there really a best option? A choice which will actually give you an edge to beat your rivals - to go just a little bit faster, or recover that little bit quicker?

Well, yes - some characters are mathmatically better than others. This is even true when you factor in the many different kart pieces - bodies, wheels and gliders - which you can mix and match to tweak your overall racer stat. So how do you pick?

According to a fasincating and beautifully put together piece of research by data scientist Antoine Mayerowitz, there are 703,560 different build options to choose from when you cater to all the different characters and kart pieces. But many of these are carbon copies of each other - so you can quickly whittle that down to just 25,704 distinct statistical options.

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We're now 20 years on from the release of The Simpsons: Hit & Run and we're still without a sequel. That said, we now have a nightmarish glimpse into what could have been, perhaps, with a Mario Kart parody sequence in the latest episode of the animated series.

Episode 12 of season 35, Lisa Gets an F1, aired on 25th February, and follows Lisa as she becomes a professional kid go-kart racer whilst dealing with her anxiety stemming from Homer's dangerous driving. As Homer worries about Lisa's safety, one night he has a nightmare where he, Lisa, and a number of other children are driving in an off-kilter version of Mario Kart.

"It's me, Lisa Mario," Lisa proclaims at the starting line of Rainbow Road, fully decked out with a blue hat, moustache, and her dress altered to look like Mario's overalls. She's joined by Ralph dressed up as Toad, Nelson tranformed into Bowser, and one of the Mackleberry twins as Princess Peach.

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Nintendo Directs are often different across different regions. The order of games presented may be a bit rearranged, or there may even be wholly different titles announced in one region than another. Today’s Partner Showcase may have featured the single biggest such discrepancy of all time. Why? Because we did it,…

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