On Schmovement

"Schmovement" is a funny word for "fancy movement", especially in video games. This article explores how schmovement is used, to various degrees of success, in three different kart racing games.

By: TheHans255

6/20/2026

"Schmovement" is a funny word for "fancy movement", especially in video games. Y'know, things like rail grinding, air dashes, rolls, propelling yourself with gun recoil, etc. It's closely related to the term "parkour", but a bit more general.

When I got my Switch 2 a year ago, the premier game was Mario Kart World, the most recent entry in the Mario Kart series. One of its major selling points (and "selling" is an apt word here, seeing as it goes for 80 USD where I live) was that players now have a lot more of these "schmovement" options while driving. In addition to the powersliding that players could do since 64 and the tricks off ramps players could do since Wii, you can do these things in addition:

• While doing a trick, you can hold down a direction to quickly shift in that direction.
• You can hold down the drift button while driving in a straight line to charge up a jump, which you can then use to jump in a direction.
• You can grind rails, including train tracks, power lines, construction rafters, etc. While rail grinding you will generate drift boost and will release it when you jump.
• If you ground jump or jump off a ramp onto a wall from the side, you can briefly ride along the wall and get boost when you land.

Racetracks are, of course, now built with these features in mind, and the player is encouraged to use them to gain speed and take shortcuts. The schmovement tricks are also a major part of the free roam, open world mode, where you can drive amongst the tracks freely and use tricks to find secrets in places that are not normally part of the course.

I play this game every so often. Using the schmovement is decently interesting. Mildly amusing, even. But my overwhelming impression, every time I pick up this game, is that I would much rather be playing Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers.

Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers is another kart racing game whose major selling point (and "selling" is not an apt word here, seeing as it's a free Sonic fangame based on the open-source Doom engine) is also having a lot of these "schmovement" options. Ring Racers came out about a year before Mario Kart World did, and a prototype of the game, Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart, has been around for a decade prior to that. And I discovered that prototype in early 2020 and have been playing Ring Racers since it came out, which means that I've been well fed on this flavor of schmovement well before encountering what Mario Kart had to offer.

I think that the greatest difference between Mario Kart World's schmovement and Ring Racers's schmovement is that unlike Mario Kart World, which is designed to still be playable by a wee child who only knows how to steer and allows its schmovement to be completely optional, Ring Racers makes its schmovement required. And unlike Mario Kart's schmovement, which is oriented around making you go forward faster and hitting various trick points on the course, Ring Racers's schmovement revolves around managing your momentum and changing it on a dime in order to navigate obstacles and turns. And of course, unlike Mario Kart's schmovement, Ring Racers' schmovement is fun as hell.

Some examples of things you can do:

• First of all, you can stop dead in midair at the press of a button. This can be used to end a jump off a ramp that isn't particularly going anywhere, so you can start driving and drifting again. This also lets you avoid sailing into obstacles or hit targets, such as boost panels, below you.
• Drifting is available as a kart racer staple, for generating boost around tight turns. But for getting around even tighter hairpin turns, the game include a trick called a "sliptide", where you turn while boosting and tap the drift button, causing your back wheels to swerve and doing its own kind of dash.
• If you're stopped, you can Spin Dash back into full speed, even from off-road.
• There aren't tricks off of ramps, but there are are special trick panels, which are their own special event. Doing a trick has you pressing the accelerator and a direction, which will immediately shift your momentum into that direction and also grant you energy that you can turn into a Voltage Drop, a huge burst of speed forward.

Of course, what really makes the game fun and interesting is its general focus on player agency and skill, in that the game is not overly concerned about punishing frontrunners to get players in back to catch up, but simply makes the game more demanding for them (as a case in point, the Self-Propelled Bomb, which is Ring Racers's equivalent to the Blue Shell, can be outrun by the player in the lead if they play perfectly, though certain items that would help them do that can no longer be picked up). The schmovement just happens to be a big part of that.

I'll certainly write a lot more about this game in the future, but for now here's a link so you can try it yourself. It runs on pretty much any PC and doesn't even need a good graphics card!

Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers home page

Now, I can't just make this a Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers appreciation post, because I also need to bring up a third racing game that is also a kart racer with schmovement, and that I happen to also really like.

About six months into the lifetime of the Switch 2, it got a second-party release, Kirby Air Riders. Its main selling points (an apt word again, though in a more modest sense, as the game goes for 70 USD here) are that it's a kart racing game in the Kirby franchise where all controls are accessible via a control stick and a single button, and it was designed by Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of the Super Smash Bros. series.

On its face, the premise sounds mind-numbingly boring. Not having multiple buttons buttons suggests that the Air Ride machines (which are more like hoverboards instead of karts) aren't really doing much, especially when you hear that the main button is actually a stop button and the machines accelerate by themselves. This is where you'd be wrong - where the game gets its interest and complexity is in its own flavor of schmovement, which expects you use that stick and that button for every last ounce that they're worth.

And like Ring Racers, Kirby Air Ride requires its schmovement, and that makes the schmovement fun. Starting from the default state of the machine going at a modest top speed in a straight line when you let go of the controls, you need to successfully interact with course features, executing correct techniques and making smart decisions, in order to get your true top speed and win the race:

• The single button is known as your Boost button, which is actually your drift. When you hold the button, you will slow down, but charge up a boost, which will go off when you let go of the button and will be especially high when the boost is fully charged. This is used almost universally to drift around corners.
• Whenever you go off a ramp, your machine glides. You can tilt the stick forward and back to change your machine's pitch and glide slower and higher or faster and lower. You are expected to keep your machine level when you touch the ground for a quick boost of speed.
• While gliding, you can also use the boost button to stop dead in the air in order to interact with a feature below you.
• You can grind rails, which is always very fast, and can switch between rails to interact with objects or other players.

Honestly, a good chunk of the interaction is about combat, interestingly enough. The course is littered with enemies that are placed deterministically, and defeating enemies by running into them or doing a Quick Spin (which is done by flicking the control stick back and forth) grants you speed. Many of these enemies also grant Copy Abilities that let you attack in other ways or give other interesting movement options, such as turning you into a wheel or steel ball. Attacking other players with these same techniques will cause you to temporarily steal top speed from them.

Of course, I would be remiss to not mention City Trial, the game's battle royale mode that is often considered the "real" game in Kirby Air Riders. This game mode takes place on a large city map, and the above mentioned schmovement is now used here to explore the map and scavenge for resources, which you will use to upgrade your machine. There is a lot less focus on gaining speed and comboing movement options here, and instead creates a certain goal-oriented focus, such as to get to the top of a building or into a particular subterranian cavern.

Overall, the schmovement in Kirby Air Riders has a much different feel than that in Mario Kart or Ring Racers, but is fun all the same. And it helps that the schmovement is complemented by a lot of other great bits, such as an incredible variety of machines and characters (some of which completely change the rules of engagement) and a roster of courses that, while small (weighing in at 18 total) are almost all well designed and quite pretty to look at.

I generally like schmovement in games a lot, and I'll probably write about how it appears in other games in the future. Some of my favorite games are movement shooters, such as Deadlock, ULTRAKILL, and Risk of Rain 2, and there are also plenty of action RPGs with interesting movement, such as CrossCode. Writing this, I also get the feeling that I might enjoy playing skateboarding games, so maybe I'll try that out at some point.