Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

This definitive version of the popular racing franchise brings hours of fast-paced fun to the palms of your hands. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is an interesting cross-pollination of previous entries and course corrections on a few lacking (or completely missing) modes of the 2014 Wii U version. If you're unfamiliar with the lineage, all you need to know is that this entry is wacky, frenetic, and a lot of fun. In the racing modes, each track is given a healthy amount of variety, not only in their frequent branching paths offering alternate routes but also in the strategy in customizing your vehicle. Most stages have areas where your car (or motorcycle) will flip into a hovercraft, go underwater, or go careening through the sky with a paraglider. You can change up each of these different modes for your car, plus the wheel size and chassis. This, on top of the 42 characters available, means you can fine-tune but also explore for quite a while to find your winning combination that works for your play style. There are also lots of variants in the battle modes (coin runners, shine thief, balloon battle, renegade roundup) -- which were noticeably anemic in the original Wii U version. Here, most of them are great. Obviously, with so much sheer stuff in this game, not everything will be a smashing success. The only minor knocks against it are the inability to customize your control, how dull single-player will be for series veterans, and the fact that while there are tons of characters, many of them are uninspired (baby versions of characters, characters wearing different costumes). Still, Mario Kart is Mario Kart, meaning it's a blast and madcap fun to play for hours and hours and hours.