by
Evan Norris
, posted 10 hours ago / 629 ViewsThis article series is dedicated to Nikena, my Mario Kart rival.
With a new Mario Kart only days away, it’s a perfect time to revisit Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, perhaps for the final time. Mario Kart 8 has been with us, in some form or another, for over a decade, believe it or not. In that time the track count went from 32 to 48, before ballooning to 96 with the Booster Course Pass DLC. It’s doubtful we’ll ever see a game from the series with so many courses again. To celebrate all 96 tracks, and to bid a fond farewell to what I consider the finest Mario Kart (not to mention the best racing game ever made), I’ve ranked each and every course, from 96 to 1. So buckle up; this is going to take a while.
   
#96Baby Park

In my college days, we would always end game night with a quick round of Baby Park in Double Dash. The chaos and craziness of the short oval, paired with the fact that it was incredibly accessible and democratic — “the great leveler”, in the words of Mr. Burns — made it the ideal send-off for the evening. The Mario Kart 8 version of the track, though, just doesn’t compare. For one, it doesn’t have those course-wrecking, character-specific special items from the GameCube days that made the experience truly destructive and unpredictable. For another, the course is set entirely in anti-gravity, which works against the feel and flow. Everything is too slippery and loose.
    
#95Yoshi Valley

Typically, the fourth and final course in a Mario Kart cup is a show-stopper, but not so much in Mario Kart 8’s Leaf Cup. The final course is Yoshi Valley, which gets a glow-up from the N64 days, but, unfortunately, remains an uninspiring affair. The major problem here is the maze-like layout; it just doesn’t work in a racing game. Some routes are simply faster and more reliable than others, although the MK8 remake does attempt to even out the lengths of each alternative path. On the plus side, this version of the track is much more interesting visually. The valley now features a waterfall, a river, baobab-like trees, and a giant rock formation resembling a Green Yoshi.
   
#94Peach Gardens

Peach Gardens was never what you’d call a paragon of stellar track design, but its original DS incarnation was pretty enjoyable. The Mario Kart 8 Deluxe iteration, however, leaves something be desired. Based on the Tour version, it loses or softens its flowery hazards and turns the slightly claustrophobic hedge maze area into a wide-open leisurely park. This new iteration ends with a lap variant, which sees racers heading in reverse through the gardens. It’s a neat twist, but not enough to elevate what remains a very vanilla course. On the bright side, the music is still great.
  
#93Tokyo Blur

Tokyo Blur has a lot of untapped potential. It’s very inviting, thanks to a striking opening view of Mount Fuji & Tokyo Tower, and its busy street racing calls to mind Ridge Racer. Unfortunately, the track just isn’t very exciting. It’s too wide — something true of many of the Booster Course DLC tracks, owing to their origins in Mario Kart Tour — and too bland. It’s worth noting the Tokyo Blur in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe combines three variants from Tour, which means an alternative third lap on the Tokyo highway, which is definitely the highlight.
    
#92New York Minute

New York City is one of the most exciting places on planet Earth, but its Mario Kart counterpart, New York Minute, is anything but. It’s just a safe, ho-hum sort of course, without many surprises or tension. It would benefit from additional obstacles — perhaps moving cars or more manhole covers, which launch skyward atop columns of water — and short-cuts. That said, the trappings of the course are stellar: skyscrapers lit up like Christmas trees and the Time Square jumbotron showing the original Donkey Kong game, to name a couple.
   
#91Bangkok Rush

I don’t have it out for the city courses, I promise. Heck, there are two in the top 20! As for Bangkok Rush, I’ve somewhat soured on it in the months after it first appeared in Wave 4 of the Booster Course DLC. Yes, it combines the best set pieces from each Tour variant to create a new, dynamic experience. But at the same time it feels overlong and confused, with a few too many branching paths. It also pales in comparison to the Tour version, which benefits greatly from obstacles and a bright, fiery sunset. For some reason, the colors are washed out and hazy in Deluxe.
     
#90Cheese Land

I always let out an audible groan whenever Cheese Land is chosen. It feels like a chore. There are just a bunch of little annoyances that tend to take the fun out it, including those little pockmarks dotting the road, the slippery physics and wonky turns, and the inescapable, overwhelming yellowness of it all. To be fair, perhaps no course in all of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe commits to a theme better than Cheese Land. Everything about it is cheese: those aforementioned Swiss cheese pockmarks, giant cheese-made structures flanking the track, and, most inspired of all, mushroom tents on yellow buttes in the distance that resemble slices of pepperoni pizza.
    
#89Riverside Park

If you followed my previous article series ranking the Booster Course tracks, you probably noticed that I’m typically bearish on Super Circuit maps. Well, Riverside Park is not the one to break with that pattern. There’s nothing wrong with the track, really. It’s just a bit short and uninteresting. That said, Nintendo made some improvements over the GBA original. The track now takes place at sunny dusk, which significantly adds to the ambiance. There are also Ptooies moving across the meandering road, carrying useful items like mushrooms. And, of course, the visuals are significantly boosted. Regrettably, the shortcuts from Super Circuit are missing.
    
#88Rock Rock Mountain

Rock Rock Mountain has two things working for it: first, the theme song, a delightful rock tune with a thumping drum line and curvy guitar licks; and second, the early cave area with stone columns and low-flying Swoops. Apart from those things, however, it’s the definition of mediocrity. The biggest problem? You simply spend far too much time gliding instead of driving. 
    
#87Dry Dry Desert

Dry Dry Desert in Mario Kart 8 is less monotone and more energetic than the original on GameCube, but it’s still fairly dull. The layout isn’t especially exciting and the desert aesthetic, however improved, is sort of sleepy. The track has also been nerfed somewhat. The unpredictable tornado is gone and the suction power of the sand pit has been toned down. There’s a new watery oasis toward the end of the track, which is beautiful but tends to stall the race’s momentum.
    
#86Toad Circuit

Toad Circuit gets a lot of flack in online forums, but it’s hardly the nightmare it’s made out to be. Let’s remember: Toad Circuit started as the first track in the first cup in Mario Kart 7. It’s meant to be an introductory course to acclimate players to the game. Is it vanilla? Absolutely, but it’s not half bad, particularly for folks looking for a straightforward, no-frills racing experience.
    
#85Mario Circuit (WiiU)

The mission of Mario Circuit is to demonstrate the anti-gravity gimmick of Mario Kart 8. Thanks to its twisting Möbius strip layout and upside down castle, it accomplishes that task with flying colors. Judged on its merits as a racing track, though, it fails to impress. It’s essentially just a figure eight without much going on. The tinny music can be a little irritating as well.
   
Stay tuned for Part 2! More Articles

The now 58-year-old, who grew up playing baseball, was elated to discover that his father was MLB royalty and pleaded with his mother to take him to a game,“ [I] begged my mom to take me back to see the Phillies play Houston, and she borrowed a car and we drove to Houston. He was playing at the Astrodome, and he had left tickets for us. We walk in and they’re warming up and he’s down on the field…I started yelling at him, and then he wouldn’t look at me. I spent 30 minutes trying to get his attention, and he wouldn’t look at me. So I went and sat back down, and then I never saw him again til I was 18.”

When the “Don’t Take the Girl” singer graduated from high school in 1985, he received a baseball scholarship to Northeastern Louisiana University. However, his mother knew the scholarship wouldn’t fully cover his tuition, so she contacted Tug for financial assistance. During this time, the father and son first met. Tug later recalled their initial meeting, “He [Tim] looked at me and he said, ‘Hey, I just wanna know if I could call you dad?‘ He said he just wanted to know that he could call me Dad. I said, ‘Yeah, I’m your father.’ I mean, when you hear that, it brings everything to a conclusion.”After the reconciliation, Tim, who had gone by the last name “Smith” his entire life, changed his last name to McGraw, and he and Tug maintained a close relationship until Tug passed away from a brain tumor in 2004. In a 2021 interview with Esquire, the 1883 actor revealed his response when people ask how he overlooked his father’s treatment of him and his family while he was growing up: “People ask me, ‘How could you have a relationship with your father? You were growing up in nothing. He was a millionaire baseball player. He knew you were there, and he didn’t do anything.’ But when I found out Tug McGraw was my dad, it gave me something in my little town in Louisiana, something that I would have never reached for. How could I ever be angry?”

You’ve appeared in several Taika Waititi movies, including Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Next Goal Wins. How would you describe him as a director?

Genius. Hilarious. Lovely. Just one of the boys who’s got a really crazy energy and a really amazing zest for life and telling stories about cool stuff. Next Goal Wins was just a dream. We shot that in Hawai’i. The cast, there was Samoan, Tongan, from Hawai’i, but also from Aotearoa, from Australia. Six weeks of hanging out in Hawai’i and just getting to laugh every day. And there was our mate directing, hanging out with these Hollywood bigwigs. It was awesome. We’ve known Taika since the end of the 1900s.BuzzFeed: Do you have any favorite memories with him?I was amazed Taika even did that film. He’d done Thor and JoJo Rabbit, and his schedule was crazy; I can’t believe he found time to squeeze that in. But it’s lucky we did because Next Goal Wins, that was the last film shot before COVID changed the whole world, I reckon. We wrapped in December 2019, and the week we got home, four people had died in a seafood market in Wuhan over this weird thing called COVID-19. But I remember Taika being really sick. There were times when he would be directing, and as soon as he was off set, he would be on the chair and a physio would be working on him. But he worked extremely hard, and I remember saying to him one time, “Bro, you’re doing so much. Do you get time to rest?” And he said something like he feels like he rested for most of his life, and now he’s finally getting to do what he really wants. And so, that was an awesome attitude. I just remember Taika being really sore, and he had a bad back. But despite that, he powered on. I think the energy of all the boys and all the cast around helped to get him through.And getting to do the film with Dave Fane, who was also in Sione’s Wedding and bro’Town and the Naked Samoans, that was an absolute joy, too. This was another step up from Sione’s. Now suddenly we’re in Hawai’i, and there’s all these massive trailers and trucks. There’s a guy cooking steaks, and we’re like, “Oh, what’s that for?” And he goes, “Oh, that’s for everyone.” We’re like, “Wow! That’s incredible!” We’d walk around going, “Wow, we’ve really made it. Dave, look at this. This must be huge.” And then the crew would be like, “Oh no, this is small budget.” [Laughs] That was so cool, Next Goal Wins, and I’m really glad Taika made it. I’m proud of that film, and I love that we got to hang out with Michael Fassbender; he’s such a lovely man.

by
William D’Angelo
, posted 16 hours ago / 4,110 ViewsThe PlayStation 5 was the best-selling console in Europe with 207,689 units sold for April 2025, according to VGChartz estimates. The PlayStation 5 has now sold an estimated 25.86 million units lifetime in Europe.
The Nintendo Switch sold an estimated 78,461 units to bring its lifetime sales to 38.76 million units. The Xbox Series X|S sold 44,187 units to bring their lifetime sales to 8.42 million units.
PS5 sales compared to the same month for the PS4 in 2018 are down by over 229,000 units, while the Xbox Series X|S compared to the same month for the Xbox One are down by over 39,000 units. PS4 sold 437,171 units for the month of April 2018 and Xbox One sales were at 83,432 units.
PlayStation 5 sales compared to the same month a year ago are down by 27,326 (-11.6%). Xbox Series X|S sales are down by 538 units (-1.2%) and Nintendo Switch sales are down by 93,041 units (-54.3%).
Looking at sales month-on-month, PlayStation 5 sales are down by nearly 94,000 units, Xbox Series X|S sales are down by nearly 15,000 units, and Nintendo Switch sales are flat.
2025 year-to-date, the PlayStation 5 has sold an estimated 1.13 million units, the Nintendo Switch has sold 0.34 million units, and the Xbox Series X|S has sold 0.20 million units.

Monthly Sales:
Europe hardware estimates for April 2025 (Followed by lifetime sales):

PlayStation 5 – 207,689 (25,856,545)
Switch – 78,461 (38,764,398)
Xbox Series X|S – 44,187 (8,421,624)

Weekly Sales:
Europe April 12, 2025 hardware estimates:

PlayStation 5 – 60,441
Switch – 17,617
Xbox Series X|S – 10,813

Europe April 19, 2025 hardware estimates:

PlayStation 5 – 55,159
Switch – 18,963
Xbox Series X|S – 10,875

Europe April 26, 2025 hardware estimates:

PlayStation 5 – 46,710
Switch – 20,323
Xbox Series X|S – 10,852

Europe May 3, 2025 hardware estimates:

PlayStation 5 – 45,379
Switch – 21,558
Xbox Series X|S – 11,647

VGChartz Methodology: Hardware estimates are based on retail sampling and trends in individual countries, which are then extrapolated to represent the wider region. This typically allows us to produce figures that end up being within 10% of the actual totals.
This data is regularly compared against official shipment figures released by the console manufacturers and figures estimated by regional trackers with greater market coverage than ourselves. We then update our own estimates to bring them into line with those figures. This can result in frequent changes often within a short space of time, but we feel it’s important to prioritise accuracy over consistency.
Note that our estimates are based on sell-through data (units sold to consumers). In almost all cases the figures released by console manufacturers are based on shipment data (sell-in), where as soon as a device has left the factory and entered the supply chain for delivery it is considered a sale. This is why there is always a difference between the companies’ figures (sell-in) and VGChartz estimates (sell-through), even after we’ve made adjustments. The one exception to that is when a console has been discontinued and the remaining stock has finally sold out – at that point the figures will match.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky. More Articles

Renee Rapp Disses The Sex Lives Of College Girls

Obviously, you know Reneé Rapp. (You are, after all, a BuzzFeed reader.)

You’re also probably more than aware that she left the HBO Max show The Sex Lives of College Girls ahead of its third and final season — and that she didn’t exactly love her time on the show.

Back in 2023, she told Call Her Daddy that filming the show’s first season was “terrible” as she was coming out as bisexual. “I’m on a show [where] there are a lot of men around,” she recalled. “There are a lot of gay men around. There are a lot of straight men around. There are a lot of older men around me on set. So I’m going through set, doing these scenes, and I’m also having gay men come up to me and be like, ‘So are you, like, really gay?’ I was like, ‘Ugh!’ … It really fucking pissed me off, and it made me second-guess everything about myself.”

The following year, she told Vanity Fair that “The people in my life that I work with now care about me as a person, and I think that is a difference from things I’ve experienced in the past” — a seeming allusion to her time on The Sex Lives of College Girls.

You are also most likely aware that Reneé has a fairly successful music career. Her new album, Bite Me, comes out Aug. 1 — and the first single “Leave Me Alone” just dropped, like, a few hours ago.

Let’s take a look at some of the lyrics for a moment. Here we go: “Sign a hundred NDAs but I still say something / Leave me alone, bitch, I wanna have fun / I took my sex life with me, now the show ain’t fucking.”

Hmm. HMM! Hm. Do we think that is a direct reference to The Sex Lives of College Girls? Probably, possibly, and maybe definitely — especially since you consider that the show was recently canceled after the third season and has since failed to find a new home.

Given that Reneé is notoriously outspoken (and, to be clear, adored for it), I’m certain we’ll be getting the full story sooner or later.

Funny story lol, that’s my baby sister in the window of my mom’s minivan 😅 Only way I could go to my teen actor friends’ club bday parties was if my mom drove me… and waited outside the whole time.No after-parties for me… she was parked out front, ready to take me HOME! 😂 pic.twitter.com/Wdp1e2HetO— Tatyana Ali (@TatyanaAli) May 21, 2025