Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Is The Fastest Selling Game In The Series

It's official: people love Mario Kart. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the souped-up Switch edition of the 2014 racing title, sold more than 459,000 copies in the United States during its first day on the market.

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That's good enough to make Mario Kart 8 Deluxe the fastest-selling entry in the long and prolific franchise, breaking the record set by Mario Kart Wii back in 2008. According to Nintendo's press release, roughly 45% of all Switch owners picked up the game when it debuted last Friday.

Fans' enthusiasm is well-placed, too. In terms of review scores, Nintendo points out that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is tied with the Game Boy Advance title Mario Kart: Super Circuit with a Metacritic score of 93, making it the best-reviewed Mario Kart game of the past 15 years.

Mario Kart 8 originally launched on Nintendo's Wii U and eventually sold 8.31 million units, making it the best-selling game on the console. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe builds on the strong foundation that the original game established, and adds new tracks and new characters (some of which were available on the Wii U as premium downloadable content) and a revitalized take on the old series standard, Battle Mode.

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Nintendo's latest console, the Switch, launched just under two months ago, and quickly sold over 2.7 million units worldwide. With Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, fans have another very good reason to pick up the device—to say nothing of these other upcoming games, which are all set to blow everyone away as 2017 continues.

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