Miyamoto Claims He Hates Toad — His Mario Kart Picks Say Otherwise

Shigeru Miyamoto told Entertainment Weekly back in 2012 that Toad was his least favorite Mario Kart character. Then, between 2014 and 2015, cameras caught him picking Toad in every recorded Mario Kart 8 session he played — three separate collaborations with Smosh, iJustine, and Rosanna Pansino. Either the man who signed off on Mario Kart’s entire character roster has been running an elaborate bit for more than a decade, or a throwaway joke got taken literally by the whole internet and quoted as gospel ever since.

For anyone who actually plays Mario Kart on a handheld rather than a couch, this isn’t just trivia. The character-select screen is the first thing your thumb touches every single session — on the commute, on a flight, in the ten minutes before the lights go out. That pick becomes muscle memory fast, and it tends to say more about how you play than any developer ever will in an interview.

The ‘Balanced Character’ Excuse Is the Tell

Miyamoto’s stated reason for maining Mario was textbook: Mario is “a very balanced character.” That’s the answer a competitive player gives, and it’s the same logic that quietly drives the online meta in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, where weight class decides how hard you take a corner. Toad is a lightweight — quicker off the line, twitchier through a drift — which is exactly the kind of pick a veteran fumbles into out of habit rather than preference.

That’s the thing about character loyalty on a handheld: it’s rarely about stats. It’s about the Grand Prix you’ve run a hundred times, the D-pad you’ve worn smooth, and the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe cartridge that hasn’t left your console since launch day. Miyamoto picking Toad in every session — even after publicly dunking on him — reads less like a contradiction and more like every one of us who swears we’ll try a new main and then hovers over the same face anyway. Watch what someone picks on a handheld, not what they tell a magazine. The muscle memory doesn’t lie, and Miyamoto’s has been screaming “Toad” since 2014 — this is, after all, the man who nearly dropped Mario into Splatoon.