Nintendo's claim to fame is that its consoles are designed to deepen the bonds between family and friends, so it's pretty interesting that some of the company's most famous franchises are seemingly designed to tear those bonds apart in a matter of seconds.
One of these franchises is the long-running Mario Kart, which features an assortment of popular Mario characters - and the occasional guest character - racing against each other on a variety of colorful courses.
Among the many traits that have defined the series over the years are the various items and power-ups that players can use against their opponents in the middle of the race. Some of these items are relatively innocuous such as a simple banana peel that can either be thrown ahead of the player or left behind them, or beneficial such as the Star, which makes players faster, invincible and near-fatal to the touch.
However, the majority of these items are dangerous and are so frustrating to get hit by that they can cause extreme levels of rage and destroy relationships as a result. Such items include the Bullet Bill, which pretty much guarantees a top three position and knocks anyone who gets hit out of the way, the homing red shell, and the infamous blue shell that always seems to appear when you're in first place and no one else.
Anyone who has played the game can easily agree that these items are annoying, but choosing the worst among them is a different story.
Well, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé has weighed in on this epic debate and now we finally have an answer. When asked in an interview about what he thought was the absolute worst item to get hit with in Mario Kart, he said: "I hate getting inked."
"Getting inked," of course, is a reference to the Blooper power-up introduced in Mario Kart DS. Simply put, after a player uses the Blooper, every other player gets their screens covered in ink, obstructing their vision for several seconds.
So there you have it, Reggie has spoken. It's not the Thunder Bolt, which shrinks every driver except the user, the POW Block, which can cause every driver ahead of the user to spin out, or even the Blue Shell, which targets the person in first place and has no real benefit for the user - it's the ink.
