Mario Kart 8

If you like clocks, then Tick Tock Clock has it all – giant gears, enormous pendulums, a road of spinning cogs, slowly turning clock hands, an alarm clock starting line, Roman numeral clock faces to drive over… I love how all the various moving parts are integrated to create a believable and entertaining race track.

Tick Tock Clock first appeared as a track in Mario Kart DS, but it is modelled after a level of the same name in Super Mario 64 for the N64, and its remake on the DS. Since its last appearance in Mario Kart DS, however, this track has received a major graphical update. Due to the hardware limitations of the DS, the original version almost seemed to take place in a large, empty room. But in Mario Kart 8, the background has been redesigned with moving gears, cogs, and other clock-related objects. You can now easily tell that you are, in fact, racing inside a giant grandfather clock – a homage to the fact that the Tick Tock Clock level in Super Mario 64 was accessed by jumping through the face of a grandfather clock.

Some of the inner workings of this enormous clock provide obstacles as you’re zooming around. You must dodge giant, grinding gears, for example, and swerve past swinging pendulums. While the pendulums move pretty slowly, they are large enough that they can block a good portion of the track and force you to go out of your way to avoid them. On the flip side, moving clock hands that stretch across portions of the track can be used to your advantage, since they become small ramps to Jump Boost off of.

Next time, we head down into the sewers of the Mushroom Kingdom with Piranha Plant Slide.