Mario Kart 8 gets its own Nier: Automata Church mystery after modder shares "secret" alternative route

A Mario Kart 8 player has found an alternative route on the Cheep Cheep Beach course, except they haven't - they've modded one in.

Earlier this week, Twitter user @musebrot1 shared a video along with the caption: "Cheep Cheep Beach ALT ROUTE." In the short clip, we see Musebrot racing along Mario Kart 8's Cheep Cheep Beach course - which appears normal at first until the Mii character they're racing as takes an alternate route, dipping into the ocean to follow a secret path.

Before you all start throwing Mario Kart racers into the ocean on Cheep Cheep Beach, we should tell you that this route doesn't actually exist. Although it looks incredibly believable and fits right into Mario Kart 8, this shortcut was actually modded into the game by Musebrot.

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Watch full video here:

Cheep Cheep Beach ALT ROUTE#MK8D pic.twitter.com/iCRocMCZNBJuly 3, 2023

Don't worry if you fell for this one (we did too at first) as it seems several other Mario Kart fans were also completely shocked at the fact they'd never taken this route before. "This game has been out for so long I WOULD’VE NEVER KNEW," one player said in response to the video. "I NEVER KNEW THAT EXISTED UNTIL NOW OMG," another writes.

There were some Mario Kart 8 players out there, though, that know the courses back to front so wouldn't be fooled so easily. "Had me fooled until I saw the Donut Plains bridge model used twice in a row," one player explains. "Almost got gaslit for a second there, but driving smoothly on grass was where I crossed the line," another adds.

Seeing Mario Kart 8 fans being fooled like this reminds me (as well as other fans who experienced it) of the Nier: Automata church mystery. Last year, Nier: Automata fans were tricked into thinking that the 2017 Square Enix title had been hiding a secret area in plain sight all this time.

After countless posts on the topic in the community, speculation that lasted a good few days, and even the game's director Yoko Taro weighing in, it was then revealed that the church location was actually just a really good mod and never existed in the game. The good news is that everyone can now access the hidden location as the mod's creator has since released it to the public.

Fancy playing something other than Mario Kart 8 now? Take a look at our best racing games list.

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.