Mario Kart, the franchise most gamers know as one of the simplest yet most groundbreaking ideas in gaming: you take the most popular gaming franchise and have them race each other.
A revolutionary idea.
The Mario Kart franchise’s latest outing is now finally playable on mobile with Mario Kart Tour.
Que the money-making machine.
“Super Mario Kart” was released in North America on Sept. 1, 1992, for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the first game in the historic franchise.
The premise is simple, Mario, his friends and some of his long-time enemies, get together to race on a variety of tracks to see who comes out on top.
There are a total of four cups: the Mushroom Cup, the Flower Cup, the Star Cup and the Special Cup.
Each includes five tracks that are a variation of Mario Circuit, Donut Plains, Choco Island, Ghost Valley, Koopa Beach, Vanilla Lake and Bowser Castle, the final track in the Special Cup: the infamous Rainbow Road.
There are three different speeds players can race at, 50cc, 100cc and 150cc.
In order to get to the Special cup, you first must finish in the first overall spot in the first three cups — a bit easier said than done.
And don’t forget the series staple of item use — being able to throw shells and banana peels, use mushrooms, lightning bolts or a star — to give yourself an advantage over your other racers.
ICYMI: A Link to the Past
Tracks gain more obstacles and become more difficult farther into the game and it takes time to get used to the dated controls.
Each character has different stats on their weight, how easily they handle, speed and acceleration — all of which just depends on your playstyle.
Mario and Luigi for example, have middle of the road stats: medium acceleration, weight and handling and high top speed while Bowser and Donkey Kong Jr, the biggest characters in the game, have low acceleration and handling but high weight and top speed.
Once the races get going, you start to see how the game was able to hide its limitations.
For each racer, there is a set list of where everyone (outside of the player) will finish.
Toad, the character I mostly used for this review, was always fighting Peach for first with Donkey Kong Jr. close behind and
Luigi, Koopa Troopa and Bowser all always
finishing in the final three spots.
This creates a rival system where you’re always gunning for the top spot against the same racer, depending on which character you use.
There is also a battle mode, where each character has three balloons on unique tracks made specifically for the mode, with the goal to pop everyone’s balloons to win.
Racing and battle mode can be played by two players at the same time. But even with all these different options, tracks, items and racers, this is a sub-par game.
The handling isn’t great for any of the racers, the area on where an item can hit you or other racers is inconsistent and the visuals not looking
great — 27 years after its release — something not super common with Nintendo games.
The ambitions are clear in this game and it laid the groundwork for what the series became — it was just held back a bit by the system it is played on.
It’s not unplayable, but unlike other reviews in this series, like Punch-Out and Link’s Awakening, Mario Kart feels more like Joe and Mac, the game has simply fallen to the hands of father time.
But even with all of this, it is still miles better than the micro-transaction filled Mario Kart Tour, which despite being made 27 years after the original, falls short of all expectations and might be a new low for the series.
All in all, Super Mario Kart gets a 2.5/5, an average game with great ambitions that would eventually become utilized to its full potential as the series continued.
Zack Kellogg can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @kellogg_zack.