10 Secret Ways Video Games Play YOU

8. Mario Kart Items Are Distributed According To A Player's Race Position

It's no secret that most popular racing games employ rubber-banding mechanics to ensure a consistent sense of competition between players both human and A.I., granting racers near the end of the pack an opportunity to catch up with first place, placing greater pressure on those leading the race.

But the Mario Kart franchise dares to take this much further, and uses a similar mechanic to calculate the distribution of the various pickup items scattered around the map.

These items include bombs, bananas which other players can slip on, boosts and so on, allowing players to get a leg-up on their rivals. But as it turns out, those lower down the pecking order are given a higher probability of receiving a high-value item, such as a massive speed boost or the much-loathed blue shell.

Conversely, those in higher positions will rarely receive such items, and largely be stuck with the more boring ones such as a coin or a Blooper.

At least with Mario Kart's blue shell being the grand, infuriating equaliser that it is, nobody's really playing Mario Kart expecting a purely "fair" experience anyway.