“I'm playing a ghost I set on N64 Rainbow Road... but on Rainbow Road. Those observant will realise that this betrays a lot about how the new ghost system works;
it's not input based like before. After all, if it was, this ghost would never play back correctly, but it does. The button inputs are likely recorded, but the game users player state and some other things to show where a ghost goes, hence my ghost effectively flies the route of N64 Rainbow Road, showing off some rather neat views of Rainbow Road in the process. We imagine this new ghost system is because of Mario Kart TV, where they need the ability to rewind; a feature that wouldn't be possible with inputs only.
Of course, this has interesting side effects:
Any and all hacks are saved into a ghost and will sync on an unhacked MK8. This includes, but is not limited to, item hacks, coin count hacks, lap count hacks, and lap split hacks, boundary check hacks, checkpoint mods, etc. For a nice example, monitor my coin count throughout the run. Those coin leaps are saved into the ghost. This makes it EXTREMELY HARD to detect subtle hacks, like miniature speed mods, as the ghosts will still sync. But the more obvious hacks could be pre-detected by Nintendo before the ghost even hit Miiverse, so it's got its advantages. But the competitive TT community could use to know this information for future reference to aid in cheater catching; do not take what you see at face value, even if a ghost syncs on your Wii U.”