“When you look traditionally at Mario Kart, colliding with other characters was not something you wanted to do,” Konno said. “The risks outweighed any benefits you might get from doing that. However, the boost that you get when colliding with a character in an anti-grav section of a course alters that whole paradigm. So you may see some new strategies come out of this that even we aren’t aware of. For example, you may see some folks that may be a little down in the pack actually run into each other on purpose to give them a little extra speed so they can close the gap with whoever is in first.”
“One thing that’s always happened with previous Mario Karts is that if you’re using a light character and you bump into a heavy character you were at a disadvantage. However, with the anti-grav section, even the lighter characters will be able to strategise using the anti-grav sections to stay level, or even gain the advantage in collisions, even if you are a lighter character.”
You may see some folks that may be a little down in the pack actually run into each other on purpose to give them a little extra speed.
Mario Kart 8 producer Hideki Konno