It’s easy to miss all the little details that are in Mario Kart 8, but when Nintendo added content from Legend of Zelda and Animal Crossing to the games they did a lot to make the tracks represent the respective franchises, which includes changing the in game currency. Because of this aesthetic change in the game we can conclude a life is worth less than the infamous Animal Crossing Fish sea bass, See Bass.

Mario Coins

To start with we already know that in every Mario game you can gain a life for every 100 coins. This has been a staple of the game from the very beginning. Coins take awhile to accumulate in most of the Mario games, with the exception of New Super Mario Brothers 2, so in those games coins are not only highly valuable but can be time consuming to collect.

Mario Kart 8

In Mario Kart 8 most of the tracks use coins to provide mini speed boosts and to unlock new content when you collect so many; however, when you go to the Animal Crossingtrack the coins are changed to the Animal Crossing currency, Bells. When this conversion happens you can still collect the same amount of bells and unlock content at the same rate as if it were coins, so that concludes the conversion rate is one to one. One Mario coin equals one Animal Crossing Bell.

Animal Crossing Sea Bass

A sea bass has very little value in Animal Crossing, just 120 bells which is chump change compared to the massive amount of currency you actually need. However, since 120 bells is worth 120 Mario coins then not only is it worth an actually life but you even have some change left over.

When you think about it, it really makes you wonder why Mario works so hard for his coins when other characters like Villager can earn so much more by doing so much less. It also is amazing to realize that your house in Animal Crossing is worth more lives than what most players will ever have in Mario games. So thanks to Mario Kart 8, life really has very little value in comparison to the most common place item.