Mario Kart World: How to dodge a Blue Shell

If you’ve ever played Mario Kart before, then you know the pain a Blue Shell can cause. If you somehow don’t know, this item will charge towards the player in first place and smash into them with a large explosion, stopping them in their tracks and letting everyone else catch up. However, it is not infallible.

There are a whole bunch of different ways that you can dodge Blue Shells with various items in Mario Kart World. Some take a little luck, others a lot of skill, but if you know all of them, then you’ll find them a little less scary.

The Mushroom dodge

This is the most famous but also the most skillful. When you’re first in a race, your item pool is limited, but you can get hold of Mushrooms, which can be used to dodge a Blue Shell if you are extremely skilled with your timing.

When the Blue Shell reaches you, it will circle around you a few times, then tilt towards you before smashing into the ground. If you use your Mushroom in the few-frame window where the Blue Shell tilts towards you, then you’ll be able to dodge it, avoiding taking any damage. It’ll take some practice, but it’s well worth it.

Super Horn

This is the most straightforward. If you activate the Super Horn, it will destroy any item that comes near you for a few seconds, including the Blue Shell. It is one of the rarer items you can get in first place, so if you’re lucky enough to get one, hold onto it until you need it.

Rewind

This is perhaps the funniest, to the point where it’s kind of silly that you’re allowed to do this. In single-player only, you can press down on the D-pad at any time to rewind during a race. This will see you move backwards along your path while the other racers and items continue forwards. This includes the Blue Shell, which means if you use the rewind just as the Blue Shell reaches you, it will miss you. This has the obvious downside of making you go backwards slightly, but given that you carry your speed, it is much better than being it.

Invincibility frames

This is another skill-based dodge that requires careful timing, but when you get hit by any item, you receive about a second of invincibility from any other item that strikes you. This means that if a different item hits you moments before the Blue Shell strikes, it won’t affect you. The ideal scenario is to fire a Banana forward and drive into it the moment before the Blue Shell hits you, as the Banana slows you down the least out of all items, and you get them very regularly in first place. The timing is extremely difficult to nail, though.

Back of the pack items

There are also a handful of items that make you completely invincible for a short time. However, you can’t naturally get any of these items while in first place. If you want to use any of these items while in first, you’ll need to get them from an item box while at the back of the pack and then make your way forward.

These items are:

• Boo
• Mega Mushroom
• Star
• Bullet Bill