A French gamer achieved the near-impossible this week: he successfully used a shortcut in Mario Kart‘s infamous Rainbow Road track. In an insane play that took five years to finally pull off, a streamer jumped the track and completed a lap within seconds. This was one of Mario Kart Wii’s many ultra shortcuts with a very low chance of success.

When Mario Kart Wii was released back in 2008, it came with some unusual mechanics that allowed players to make precise jumps around certain tracks and cut to the finish line early without the game flagging it as cheating or going the wrong way. These mechanics, which still exist today, became known as “ultra shortcuts” and often require special Mario Kart items like mushroom packs to complete. There are more than 15 ultra shortcuts in Mario Kart Wii, most of which gamers have found and achieved over the years. Rainbow Road had always been one ultra shortcut that many deemed impossible to perform – until now.

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Esports consultant Rod “Slasher” Breslau shared a video of Arthur’s incredible play, which he achieved during a Mario Kart Wii stream. The clip hosted by Twitter showed Arthur, playing as Baby Daisy, taking off in lap one and stopping at the edge of the track’s first steep hill. He carefully turned his kart around and rode the edge in the opposite direction until he flew off and used three mushrooms to boost him to another side of the track. Lakitu did appear with the flashing “wrong way” sign, but went away as Arthur ran through a series of boosts. He made it to the end of the lap in just over 22 seconds.

As Slasher noted in the tweet, Arthur and the community have spent five years trying to achieve this shortcut. Slasher later added that there’s only a “0.00001% chance” of successfully pulling off the Rainbow Road track’s ultra shortcut. In a history lesson on Mario Kart Wii‘s ultra shortcuts, Summoning Salt explained that this particular shortcut is near impossible to complete because it requires a very precise “spin drift” move and the use of mushrooms at the right time to make it to the other side. Even then, the player must be in the proper checkpoint region of the track or else it will not count. The play has to be completely perfect in order to work.

Slasher said it best when he called Arthur “our new gaming king.” Mario Kart fans know that Rainbow Road has always been notoriously difficult to begin with (even though Rainbow Road is also the most popular track). It takes a brave soul to leap into the terrifying black space beneath Rainbow Road. Arthur will go down in gaming history as the first human to achieve this insane Mario Kart shortcut, and we salute him.

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Source: Slasher – Twitter

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Elise Nelson
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Elise is freelance writer with a love of indie mystery and horror video games and all things Mario. When she’s not spending hours typing away on her laptop, she enjoys practicing her ukulele, petting all the dogs, and redesigning her Animal Crossing island for the 800th time.

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