Snaking
As anyone who's played Mario Kart or FZero will know, slippy slidey racing gameplay is the order of the day. But you might not be aware that the slippy-slideyness can be twisted intoa diabolical exploitcalled 'snaking', or the less derogatory 'mini boosting'. A Nintendo employeeblogging on its official sitecalled the technique "legitimate". But it's hard to imagine that Ninty purposefully included snaking, or was remotely pleased with the emergence of the trick, given how unbalancing it is to the game. Even Nintendo Power magapparently went on recordlabelling snaking as "lame".
The technique still works in Mario Kart DS, though, so its obvious that Nintendo isn't about to stop the snakers practicing their devilish art. But as unfair as snaking in Mario Kart may seem to non-snakers, especially during online matchups on DS, the benefits are nothing compared to the stupidly-powerful boost to speedthat snaking triggersin FZero. Still, watching some of the best snakers in action, it's hard not to appreciate the skill (and arthritis-inducing effort) that goes into perfecting this controversial playing style.
