Mario Kart 8

Sherbet Land is a beautiful course set in a landscape of shimmering ice, deep snowdrifts, and crystalline caves. Fireworks can be seen in the night sky above, along with a dancing, ethereal aurora (which wasn’t visible in the original GameCube version). Don’t be lulled into complacency, though – the ice is very slippery, and careless driving may result in multi-kart pileups. The name of this track sometimes confuses people because, here in Britain, sherbet mainly refers to a flavoured sweet powder, prompting younger me to speculate that it wasn’t snow falling here, but sherbet powder. Only later did I learn that, in America, sherbet mainly refers to a type of frozen dessert, which makes the track’s name make a bit more sense.

Sherbet Land made its first appearance in Mario Kart: Double Dash! for the GameCube in 2003. The layout seen in Mario Kart 8 is largely unchanged from the track’s GameCube days – racers zoom through a lightly forested snowy tundra, into an ice cave, and across a frozen lake that is home to Freezies and groups of graceful ice-skating Shy Guys, which occasionally get in your way and pirouette into the air. Beyond the borders of the course, massive towers made of ice blocks, and even a massive ice fortress, loom over Mario and his crew, while animated snowmen can be seen as spectators at various points around the course.

The main difference between Sherbet Land’s original appearance and its Mario Kart 8 incarnation is that there are now two alternative underwater routes. Racers can stick to the traditional road on the surface of the course, or they can dive underneath the frozen lake through breaks in the ice and zoom through previously unseen parts of the track. The water is chilly down here, but at least it’s illuminated by glowing crystals and Jellybeams – bioluminescent jellyfish-like creatures first introduced in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. They were enemies back in that game, but they don’t actively interact with or get in the way of drivers in Mario Kart.

Since Sherbet Land is the only Mario Kart 8 course to feature Freezies, this seems like a good time to talk about them. These ice creatures, which always seem to have a somewhat puzzled or pained expression on their ‘face’, don’t try to get in the way of the racers, but there are enough of them on certain parts of the track that they can be an issue. In Sherbet Land’s original appearance on the GameCube, the Freezies would momentarily freeze any racer who made contact with them, but in Mario Kart 8, they break upon contact and cause the player to spin out.

Freezies are actually one of the oldest Mario enemies of all. They predate Goombas, Koopa Troopas… even Bowser. They made their first appearance in Mario Bros., which was originally released in 1983 as an arcade game and later for the NES. Freezies would emerge from pipes and slide across the stage, coating the platform in ice and making Mario and Luigi’s progress more perilous. Since then, they’ve made only very sporadic appearances in Mario games, mainly in spin-off titles and most notably in the Super Smash Bros. series as items that can be picked up and hurled at other players to freeze them solid for a second or two.

Next time, we’ll be looking at a whimsical, music-themed track, 3DS Music Park.