Andretti, he ain't. Nintendo's Mario never seemed interested in speed. No matter how fast his competitors became, Mario's videogames always moved at a comfortable pace, whether he was platforming, golfing, partying, or go-karting.

I speak in the past tense, because last month, Mario made up his mind (he knew it was time!) to leave his dead life behind. Maybe he'd been watching too many Vin Diesel films, but for whatever reason, Mario decided that he finally wanted to feel what it was like to go really, really fast. Too fast, I'm afraid. So fast, that he and his friends can no longer safely ride across the Mushroom Kingdom without slamming into walls and sliding off cliffs. Lakitu's business -- saving stray karts from falling to their death -- just picked up.

Even while mounted atop two-wheeled sports bikes (which have the highest handling stats in the game), many turns in Mario Kart 8 now prove untamable, unless you ungrip the throttle, slam on the brakes, and reignite from a dead stop. Before April's title update, braking was something I hadn't done once in 20-plus years of playing Mario Kart. But on 200cc, your driver must brake often, or his/her bones will break often.

You'll also have to forget about using any vehicle that doesn't feature an inward drift, and ignore all of the heavyweight characters, because only the lightest, most nimble contestants have any chance of staying on the road in 200cc. Maximizing your rig's acceleration has become the surest way to win, now that the courses are forcing drivers into more stops and starts than a djent guitar riff.

But not even a copy of Nintendo Power or a telephone call to a Nintendo Game Counselor (if those consumer aids still existed) could help players master every corner in 200cc. Vehicles' speeds during these races are simply too fast for the majority of Mario Kart 8's roads to handle. These levels were all designed for 150cc, which feels like it's about 50 percent slower than Nintendo's newest setting. Triggering boosts (from item pickups, power slides, or aerial stunts) has gone from being one of the most beneficial tactics in the game to one of the most counterproductive, now that the sudden velocity surge is almost certain to send your kart rocketing off-course. The AI drivers aren't immune to 200cc's gameplay imbalances, either, as CPU-controlled racers will crash just as frequently as human players, often generating giant mosh pits around tricky turns. Perhaps Nintendo's superb studio band should have covered some Slayer songs, specifically for the 200cc soundtrack.

Virtual Boy notwithstanding, this is the first Nintendo product I've ever played that can be best described by the dreaded "B word": broken. I'm amazed that Nintendo's quality assurance greenlit this mode, given the company's long-running reputation for shipping some of the most functional and stable games in the industry.

Thankfully, 200cc is an easy feature to ignore, as it's just a pre-race option that was introduced with Nintendo's free software update, and it isn't a part of the company's recent paid downloadable packages.