Apparently seemingly innocuous gestures in Mario Kart 8: Deluxe aren't so innocuous after all. It turns out that one of the characters had to have their hand gesture modified in Mario Kart 8 after some individuals pointed out that the winning pose could be seen as offensive.
Gamespot is reporting that Nintendo has had to issue a quick patch to update Mario Kart 8: Deluxe on the Nintendo Switch in order to alter the ink girl's victory pose, which included her flexing her bicep with her fist balled. She would then use her other hand and place it on her curled bicep.
According to the report, this created an issue in various European and Latin American countries, including France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and other regions. The "Italian salute" is what this particular gesture is known as in those territories, and they consider it offensive.
In order to play it on the safe side, Nintendo decided to remove the ink girl's left hand, which was placed on her right bicep. The pose now looks the way it does in the main image above, where she simply uses her right arm to raise it in a pumped fist to celebrate her victory during a race in Mario Kart 8.
The gesture was added as part of the Splatoon character additions to the Nintendo Switch version of Mario Kart 8: Deluxe, which includes both the male and female versions of the inkling squid kids.
The Gamespot article also notes that the patch makes some minor alterations to the Mii facial animations as well, but it's likely not something you would regularly notice unless you were really paying attention to the different gesticulations they make during the race. During the pre-release version of the game, I noticed the Miis made facial expressions, but maybe this change is for the online portion of the game.
Anyway, Nintendo also took liberties with adding the opponents' names in the rear view mirror during online matches, which may be useful when you're playing against opponents who aren't easily identifiable by the Miis they're using.
They also tweaked the matchmaking for the online play to throw players into the Mirror and 200cc races less often.
Another minor change they made to the online setup for Mario Kart 8: Deluxe is that player starting positions in a race are now determined by the position in which a player joined the lobby.
And speaking of lobbies... the patch notes for version 1.1 also reveals that players can now create a friend lobby even when your friend list extends beyond 100 friends.
The comment section for the article is pretty hilarious, as there are various Europeans baffled by how Nintendo didn't originally catch the inkling gesture during the original release of the game for the Nintendo Switch, since it's the equivalent of flipping someone the bird in Italy and the other aforementioned countries. Well, Nintendo got the memo loud and clear and you don't have to worry about the squid kids flipping anyone else off in Mario Kart 8.
