Want to create your own online Mario Kart 8 Deluxe tournament? Here’s how you do it.
Nintendo’s decision to bring Mario Kart 8 to Nintendo Switch certainly seems to have paid off. The game was quick off the starting line in all territories, selling 459,000 copies on its launch day in the US, and racing to the No.1 spot in the UK games charts.
Nintendo receives a lot of justified criticism for its online offerings, but the original Mario Kart 8 on Wii U was one of the first examples of Nintendo getting things exactly right. The game had a full feature set that included, two-player online racing, YouTube integration, and a suite of race customisation options. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe adds local wireless multiplayer, and a much-improved Battle mode to the mix.
Our favourite online feature however, remains the game’s Tournament mode. This option allows you to create tournaments with fully customisable rules and schedules.
How to set up a Mario Kart 8 Deluxe tournament
- From the main menu, select Online Play.
- Then select Tournament.
- From the Tournament menu you can search for existing events by code, type or Active status. To start your own, select Create a Tournament, then hit Yes.
- The first thing to do is choose a symbol to represent your tournament. We quite like the farmyard cow.
- Next, give the tournament a name. Remember, you can’t include more than five numbers in the name. And no cursing, there are kids playing.
- On the Rules screen you can change a number of customisation options including, speed, item types, CPU difficulty level, and vehicle type.
- Just below, set the Time Settings. Tournaments can be run daily, weekly, or for a fixed period. You can even choose the start and end hour.
- You can also set the number of races, and whether the tournament is private or open to everyone.
- If you are creating a Team-based tournament, you can now name each team.
- On the next screen you will get a 12-digit code that you can share with friends.
- And that’s it. Once the tournament is set up, it will run as scheduled. All participants will have their results recorded and you can view the current rankings at any time.
On that note, it would be remiss of us not to mention the Thumbsticks GP. This is our first Mario Kart 8 Deluxe tournament, and it will run every Tuesday from 9-10PM,UK time. You can join in by looking up it with the following code: 0955-6637-2395.
The Thumbsticks GP is a free-for-all event, but we’ll also be running some more customised tournaments in the near future. Follow us on Twitter to keep up-to-date.
