Thursday September 3, 2026 1:20 pm
Nintendo’s Free Switch 2 Update Crams Eight Mario Kart Players Onto One Screen
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Handhelds, Video Games
Picture your TV chopped into eight little rectangles, each one holding a friend, a kart, and a red shell with their name on it. That's now something you can do in your living room.
Nintendo pushed out a free Switch 2 update for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with no real warning, and the big change is local split-screen for eight players, up from a cap of four. This is a game that shipped on Wii U in 2014 and again on Switch in 2017. Twelve years on, it's still growing new features.
Eight players, eight slivers
Four-player split-screen already asks a lot of a television. Eight turns each player's view into a sliver. That's fine for elbowing your friends off Rainbow Road while one of them yells that they can't see anything, which is the correct use of the feature.
Getting there takes hardware, though. A Switch 2 will connect up to seven standard Joy-Con or Pro Controllers, but the eighth seat needs a Joy-Con 2 or a Switch 2 Pro Controller. Your drawer of old Switch controllers covers most of the table, and then Nintendo asks you to buy one more thing to fill the last spot.
The rest of the update
CameraPlay is in now, so a USB camera (sold separately) can put live video of the people you're racing on screen, either in the same room or online through GameChat. Nintendo's own listing notes that CameraPlay works with two to four players, so it doesn't stretch to the full eight.
Loading before races and battles is quicker. Docked visuals look better on 4K TVs, and handheld now runs at native 1080p, which previously required the game's Handheld Mode Boost option.
The balance tweaks
Player speed is up by roughly what a single coin used to give you, so everyone is a touch quicker. Boo's invisibility no longer slows you down offroad, which makes it a much better way to cut a corner. And Booster Course Pass owners get a "96 Races" option in VS mode.
The update is free and already live. The only cost is rounding up eight people and enough controllers to seat them.