Mario Kart player conquers Rainbow Road ultra shortcut, beats world record by over 10 seconds

Rainbow Road — the place where dreams go to die, friendships are broken, and ridiculously difficult shortcuts are nailed by people with far more patience than us mere mortals.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the Nintendo Switch re-release of the Wii U racer, may be the latest and greatest kart-drifter this side of Mushroom Kingdom — it was even one of the highest selling games in Australia during 2020 — but Mario Kart Wii still has a strong following.

So strong, in fact, that an entire community of players still compete for the leaderboards, trying to discover new shortcuts and glitches to shave seconds off of their times. French player ArthuurrrP recently set a new record by landing what is regarded as the hardest shortcut in the game.

While streaming a run on Mario Kart Wii's Rainbow Road, ArthuurrrP pulled off the course's "ultra shortcut" as Baby Daisy, by spinning a 180 shortly after the starting line, straddling the side railing and launching off towards one of the lap's final bends, skipping most of the track.

The result was an astounding 22.526-second lap time, which paved the way for a subsequently shortcut-less two laps, setting a new world record of 2:14​.677, more than 10 seconds faster than Flare's glitchless run 15 days prior.

What makes ArthuurrrP's feat even more impressive is learning about the context behind this ultra shortcut. Eurogamer's Tom Phillips points out that ultra shortcuts require a degree of precision usually only made possible by assist tools.

Regarded as the final ultra shortcut to be conquered, the Mario Kart Wii Rainbow Road technique has been known since 2016, but no one has ever managed to complete it manually until ArthuurrrP and his infant princess driver did the unthinkable.

To put into perspective how monumental ultra shortcuts are among the Mario Kart community, a video by YouTuber Summoning Salt on the topic has nearly 11 million views.

Thousands of attempts and hundreds of hours later, ArthuurrrP made Mario Kart Wii history. After watching how precarious the move is, it's no wonder Mario Kart is one of the most stressful games to play.

As clipped by Twitch user pellehun, ArthuurrrP's delight at performing the manoeuvre is infectious, exclaiming "I did it!" repeatedly in a charmingly understated way.

Shine on, you Daisy diamond.