Looks like Mario Kart 8's controversial fire hopping has been nerfed on Switch

Nintendo appears to have removed Mario Kart 8's sneaky fire hopping technique for the game's upcoming Nintendo Switch re-release.

Footage from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, posted by GameXplain, shows that there's no speed advantage to using it.

Fire hopping was discovered and named by fans back in 2014, when Mario Kart 8 originally launched on Wii U.

The move was never acknowledged by Nintendo as an official part of the game - fans found it by accident. It quickly became controversial. Some fans viewed it as a bug, others as a legitimate exploit of the game's systems. Regardless, many of the best lap times soon demanded players perfect it in order to keep up.

The tough-to-master technique involves rapidly skidding and boosting on straight sections of the track to achieve a slight speed increase.

But in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, performing the technique now only seems to penalise the player - as you perform skids with no resulting boost.

It's not the only tweak to the game for Deluxe - Nintendo has also added double item blocks and the pink flame boost, previously seen in earlier entries like Double Dash!!

Nintendo previously ensured fire hopping would not work in Mario Kart 8's 200cc mode, added as free DLC, although it left the move intact elsewhere.

Nintendo fans may finally have their answer then - when it comes to fire hopping, Nintendo does not approve.