My 8-Year-Old Son Totally Schooled Mario Himself in a Game of Mario Kart 8

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It’s not every day you get to play a brand new Mario Kart game a month or so before it comes out. And it’s not every day that you get to race against the Big “M’ himself. But my kids and I got to do just that recently at an awesome Mario Kart 8 Media Event held at the Nintendo World Store in Manhattan.

The second floor of the store was blocked off for invited guests only. Woot! I was on the list! Although it took awhile for the guard to actually find my name on there. I was all ready to slip him a twenty when he found Mommy’s Busy, Go Ask Daddy. Whew.

Up we went to find every console had been set up with the new Mario Kart 8 game (out on the Wii U the end of May), and even better, every course and character had been unlocked so we could really take them for a ride!

Jason took no time at mastering the controls and heading to Rainbow Road!

Ryan taught the Nintendo Store employee a thing or two.

My full review of the game is coming up later this month (I’ll quickly state this: “OMG IT’S SO AWESOME!”), but I did get a few quick comments from Jason before he spent nearly two hours racing around (and up the sides of!) familiar and all-new tracks.

So, wadda ya think, Jason?

At one point, Mario and Luigi themselves came out to join the crowd. They posed for photos and even played a few rounds of Mario Kart 8 with the folks in the crowd.

"It's a MEEEEEEEE!" — “It’s a MEEEEEEEE!”

Ryan, who was literally running circles around me when we played together (in all fairness, he’s REALLY good just like his big brother Jason, and I’m REALLY bad…), took on Mario. I don’t know how the Big Guy held that Wii remote in his big white-gloved hands, but he managed to do it enough to move around.

Mario costume — Ryan takes on Mario in Mario Kart 8!

They played just one race and Ryan easily came in first. After a good 20 or 30 minutes, Mario finally finished the race in 12th place.

Ryan (left) ruled the course, while everyone fell asleep waiting for Mario to finish.

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a selfie with Luigi!

We eventually headed home but soon got back behind the wheel when we received a download code later that week! So we’ve been unlocking tracks and characters for days now! A big, fat, honkin’ THANK YOU to the folks at Nintendo for throwing an awesome shindig!

It was really such a great time at Nintendo World. Now if you’ll excuse me, the kids are off to bed, so I’m off to practice my driving, thank you very much.