Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s smart steering option helps child who suffered a stroke play the game

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, an enhanced port of 2014’s Mario Kart 8 on Wii U, brings the long-running racing franchise to the Nintendo Switch. One of the changes the Deluxe version brings is a new “smart steering” setting, which is enabled by default and automatically guides vehicles from veering off-road.

Some veteran players may scoff at the idea, but for four-year-old Molly, it was necessary to make the game playable.

According to a Reddit post made by Keith, her father, Molly suffered a stroke a month after she was born. As a result, she lacks coordination with her right hand to accelerate while steering with her left.

However, with smart steering in play, she could enjoy the game to its fullest without having to worry about specific racing controls.

“My daughter’s stroke made finding games that her and I could enjoy together different primarily in that it just limited what games we could play,” Keith told Kotaku in an e-mail. “She loves Mario Maker, but she could never participate in that game because of the complexity of the controls.”

He said she would get frustrated while playing many games, as they were too difficult to play with her disability. Therefore, he said he’s grateful that more accessible options are present in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

“I’m sure [smart steering] will be an annoyance to many, but for my daughter, who would otherwise not really be able to participate, it is the best feature ever added to a Mario Kart game,” Keith wrote on Reddit. “She is currently sitting in my living with my other 2 kids and my wife and all of them are playing Mario Kart and laughing their heads off.”

Molly will have plenty of people to race against, too, given Nintendo’s announcement on Monday that the game has already sold nearly 460,000 copies in the U.S. alone.

More information on the upgrades found in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe can be found in MobileSyrup‘s review.

Source: Kotaku