What do you love about “Mario Kart?” For me, it’s the breathtaking feeling of being off-balance on a turn, tires skidding, on edge, grasping for traction. It’s the tiny mental calculations in the split second between the neuron responsible for doubt firing off its fearful message, and your kart either careening off the turn so comically that you wondered why you ever hoped you could have made it, or just barely squeaking by. “Mario Kart” is about bragging to friends and strangers that you could beat them — the nerves kicking in as you feel the plasticky bzzzt of the baby joycon, transformed as if by alchemy into the growl of an engine as the race starts — and then actually beating them.

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