Mario Kart 8

An edible landscape made entirely of candies, chocolate, cookies, cakes, and other confectionery. That’s what awaits racers in Sweet Sweet Canyon. Take some time to admire the scenery, and you’ll see that every piece of the track is dessert-ified. The ‘canyon walls’ are made of layered sponge cake, the roads are edged with frosting that slows you down, and there’s even a conspicuous doughnut signalling a shortcut.

From the starting line (where Gingerbread Men and Gingerbread Toads can be seen cheering the racers on and jumping up and down), the track curves to the right and goes through a cave. At the end is a glider cannon that launches racers onto a huge, towering cake. From there, you spiral downwards into a lake and enter an underwater section, but it isn’t water – you’re actually driving through orange soda! The final set of curves is guarded by massive Piranha Plants, which will try to bite at any racers who get too close.

Sweet Sweet Canyon is a really charming track, and I love the candy aesthetic – from the glossy translucent look of the lollipop trees to the waffle-cone windmills in the background, which have blades made out of different-coloured wafers. And the more you look, the more detail you notice. Stacks of triple-filled Oreos are piled up beside the track. Little ice cream cones on the road serve as traffic cones (though they are harmless and can be bowled over without issue). And it was only when I was taking screenshots for this article that I noticed the sugar dusting on the plateaus surrounding the course (you can see it on the left of the image at the top of the page).

The more I think about it, the more Sweet Sweet Canyon reminds me of the candy-filled racetrack from the Sugar Rush arcade game seen in Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph, which was released a couple of years before Mario Kart 8. That movie paid homage to the Super Mario series by featuring a cameo appearance by Bowser (along with a Super Mushroom). Could this sugary high-speed course be Nintendo paying homage to Wreck-It Ralph in return? Or was it just a confectionery coincidence?

In any case, it’s time to move on to the final track in the Mushroom Cup. The Thwomp Ruins are the ancient remains of a long-lost civilisation – so naturally a racetrack was built through it!