Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – How to Easily Find Friends’ Ghosts

mario-kart-8-deluxe

I don't currently have Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, only the Wii U version. I'm trying to assess whether the deluxe version has some functionality I've been really wanting.

On the Wii U, my friends and I would all run time trials on the same machine, under different profiles. However accessing each other's ghosts was very problematic. We'd all friend/follow each other, change our private/public settings, post to miiverse and wait, ext, ext and it just wouldn't work consistently.

We tried everything, but in the end we only had access to a fraction of each other's ghosts, sporadically. This was a very simple task on the Wii, you could just access all the local ghosts.

Is sharing local ghosts something that can be done more easily on the switch, or is it using the same system as the Wii U?

Bonus question: when downloading "Online Ghosts", do you have different options besides the top 10 of all time and a few other people within milliseconds of you?

Update: I've purchased the game and my experience is in an answer below.

Best Answer

It IS possible to race against other "local ghosts" (ghosts from other player profiles on your Switch), but the procedure is a bit convoluted:

  1. You need to add the other local player as a friend on the Switch's main menu.
    1. Both players need to have their Switch player profiles linked to My Nintendo accounts. (Mario Kart 8 Deluxe will prompt to you do this if you haven't done it already when you try to upload a ghost after finishing a time trial.)
    2. Then, from the Switch's main system menu, one player can add the other local player via their Friend Code. (As of the time of this writing, you actually do need to write down or photograph the other local player profile's friend code; the Switch won't "look it up" for you!)
    3. The friend then needs to accept that friend invite. (Since both player profiles are on your local Switch, you can just do this for them.)
  2. Then, your local friend's ghosts will show up with an orange background (as in @Batophobia's answer) when looking at the lists of "Online ghosts" for a course, provided the ghost was uploaded (as MK8D prompts you to do after finishing a time trial).