The Mario Kart Drinking Game Is Downright Dangerous

It’s Monday afternoon and I’m still hungover from Saturday night, an incredible feat made possible by a sadistic Mario Kart drinking game. It’s known to some as ‘Beerio Kart’, others call it ‘Drunk Driving’, but I think I’m going to stick with ‘Never Again’.

The rules are pretty simple: each player grabs a can of beer (or cider, or whatever your drink of choice is so long as everyone’s drinking basically the same amount of basically the same thing) and a controller with any edition of Mario Kart loaded up. You have to win the race as usual but you also have to finish your drink before you cross the finish line.

Oh, and there’s no drinking and driving allowed — whenever you drink, you have to have your kart at a complete stop. Sounds great, right?

It’s actually an interesting game so far as strategy is concerned, more so than any other video game based drinking games. When do you undertake the onerous chore of finishing your drink?

Finish it all at the start and then race straight to the end, but risk having your driving skills inhibited by the full can of beer now sloshing around in your gut? Get yourself to the finish line first and then scull your drink so you can just roll over when you’re done? Space it out among a few laps?

I found that the first tactic was actually the most effective in almost every race — when you’re sitting at last place for most of the race, you get so many blue shells and lightning bolts that it’s worth the pain of downing your entire drink at the beginning.

Unfortunately it took me a couple of races to get this strategy down, and we ended up doing at least eight different courses in the end. As a vaguely competitive gamer who gets more competitive after a couple of drinks, this drinking game got me drunker than I have ever been in my life. I’m pretty sure it almost killed me.

See, Mario Kart levels are generally pretty short, and while canned drinks may only have a bit more than a standard drink in them, it can really add up after only ten minutes of gaming. For once in its long, long history, Rainbow Road is a blessing — giving you a beautifully long period in which to finish your drink. Yoshi Valley, on the other hand… well, I recommend staying away unless its your first round.

In fact, I highly recommend stopping at a single circuit of four if you do decide to play this game — overly competitive people should probably stay away for the sake of their livers.

While the game seems to have grown in popularity from an Imgur graphic (though I’m sure it’s been in existence in some form or another since Mario Kart was invented), it was further popularised by a Buzzfeed video that depicted… well, pretty much exactly how one of these games goes down.

People will cheat (or misunderstand the rules), others will think they’re ahead without realising that everyone has already finished their drinks and things will generally get messy.

If you want to get drunk quick and you’re confident in your Mario Kart skills, it’s a fun game to play — so long as you can restrain yourself to a couple of races. Otherwise, listen to my pounding second-day headache and stay well away — this is one game that should come with a warning label.


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