The secret game modes YOU invented

Snaking

As anyone who's played Mario Kart or FZero will know, slippy slidey racing gameplay is the order of the day. But you might not be aware that the slippy-slideyness can be twisted intocall🍃ed 'snaking', or the less derogatory 'mini boosting'. A Nintendo employeecalled the technique "legitimate". But it's hard to imagine that Ninty purposefully included snaking, or was remotely pleased with the emergence of the trick, given how unbalancing it is to the game. Even Nintendo Power maglabelling snaking as "lame".

The technique still works in Mario Kart DS, though, so its obvious that Nintendo isn't about to stop the snakers practicing their devilish art. But as 🅰unfair as snaking in Mario Kart may seem to non-snakers, especially during online matchups on DS, the benefits are nothing compared to the stupidly-powerful boost to speedin FZero. Still, watching some of the best snakers in action, it's hard not 𒉰to appreciate the skill (and arthritis-inducing effort) that goes into perfecting this controversial playing style.

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charit꧑y coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into 🦩a different era of video games.