Hi, I'm jakus. Today I feel a little nostalgic, so I’m going to play a game that was released before I was born and claim that it’s underrated!
MARIO KART REVIEW SERIES - PART 1: SUPER MARIO KART (1990)
Ahh, Mario Kart. Everyone knows it, many have played it, whether it be Mario Kart 8, 64, or even the greatest Mario Kart game ever created, Wii. Over the years Mario Kart has become one of Nintendo's most beloved franchises and for good reason. It has plenty of characters, unlockables, and fun and creative tracks. Playing with friends and playing online in later releases are great editions too. But let's go back to where it all started, the year 1992…
Super Mario Kart began development as a generic kart racer with generic racer people, and then bananas happened and Mario Kart was born.
Super Mario Kart was released on August 27th 1992 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES, and it was a huge success, becoming the 4th best selling Super Nintendo game! But is it really all that good?
THE GAMEPLAY
There are a total of 8 characters here, humble beginnings. These are Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Bowser, Toad, Koopa Troopa and Donkey Kong.. Junior? Yeahhh, a strange choice, for sure.
You can either choose the 50cc or 100cc class, with 50cc being the easiest. 150cc is unlocked by getting a Gold Trophy in all four of the cups, in both 50cc and 100cc. There are four cups, each of them containing five tracks, adding up to a total of 20 tracks in the game. Upon getting a gold trophy in each of the courses in the 50cc and 100cc modes you unlock the Special Cup. There's also a time trial mode, which is fine, and a two player battle mode, which is a blast to play with friends.
Drifting is here, but can be a real pain and more often than not it's utterly useless. There's no advantage to be gained while drifting other than to crash face first into a wall or slide off the track. So you're just better off turning normally. Now you may be a Mario Kart Master but this game in many cases becomes extremely unfair. So you have your typical items. The Green shell, Red shell, Bananas and so on.. there’s also the feather. Now up until Mario Kart 8 this was exclusive to this game. It's purpose is very minimal and is only useful in a few situations, for example in the ghost house track there's a platform where you can jump over to take a shortcut. But other than that it's basically useless.
There also coins.. lots and lots of coins. They grant you a little extra speed, depending on how many you have, but again not all that useful. The CPU is probably the biggest problem I have with this game.. let's use the term "Rubberbanding". Now, if you've played any other Mario kart besides this one, and maybe 64, you'd know that after you pelt an enemy with a shell or they usually take a while to get back to you, let alone first place.. But not in this game. In this game the computer works its way back up to you in a matter of seconds and it can get really annoying.
The CPUs have unfair advantages throughout the game and you'll realize that some of your losses are due to the game being unfair. Another example of this is the magical items the CPU seems to have access to. For example the CPUs will constantly chuck items at you that you yourself can't use. There's the Shrink Mushroom which when you come in contact with it you.. well, shrink. There's Yoshi chucking eggs at you, and Bowser throwing fireballs. There's nothing more frustrating than being in first place, just to get hit with a shrink Mushroom.. At least there’s no blue shell yet, I guess.
I won't talk about the courses much, most of them are boring. Rainbow Road, which despite being the worst Rainbow Road in the series, is infamous and led us down the road that lead to Rainbow Road in Mario Kart 7, so props for that.
I like the courses but they get very repetitive very fast. There are three Bowser Castles, three Donut Plains, three Ghost Valleys etc.; and the thing is they all look so similar. Now in later games the Bower Castle tracks were always one of my favourites, especially in Wii and 8 but in this game there isn’t enough to distinguish the courses. Now there is one course in this game I absolutely despise, and it's Vanilla Lake.
Not only is this course boring but every 2 seconds there's a hole that is really hard to avoid and trying to successfully avoid them is a pain.. The courses I like the most are the Mario Circuit and Ghost Valley tracks, despite their unoriginality. They're much simpler to control in and it's heavenly compared to the other tracks.
My favorite course, however, is Rainbow Road. It's challenging and can be really frustrating but it's been a staple since this game and I do like it, even if it isn’t good compared to other Rainbow Roads. Plus, there's only one version of this track in the entire game which is refreshing.
THE GRAPHICS
The graphics actually look quite alright. This game, just like many others during the time, used Mode 7. Now what is Mode 7 you ask? Mode 7 is a graphics mode on the Super Nintendo that allows a background layer to be rotated and scaled on a scanline-by-scanline basis to create many different effects. Other games that used this were Super Tennis and F-Zero. There are some instances when the background becomes a bother, for example in the Choco Island tracks it can become a bit disorienting but other than that they look good, especially for 1992 standards.
THE SOUNDTRACK
Now when I think of amazing soundtracks this isn't the first game I'd come to. Now that doesn't mean the soundtrack is bad, in fact I'd say it's quite good. My favourite is probably Koopa Beach, I've always loved the tune. Rainbow Road is an outstanding track, it captures the fast paced nature of the course quite well. Every other track, although not outstanding, its decent enough and compliments their courses very well.
TO CONCLUDE...
Super Mario Kart is a decent game that's easy to play but difficult to master. There's many flaws in this game but despite that there's still fun to be had. Now, would I recommend this game? Sure, but if you want to play Mario Kart or experience it for the first time I'd say play any other Mario Kart game in the series. More fun is to be had and any other Mario Kart game than this is much better.
I respect this game a lot, it's the first in the series and though it wasn't perfect, Nintendo made better games with each release and the flaws became less and less of an issue. This was a good first attempt and for the standards of the early 90’s, is absolutely fantastic. Besides, give Nintendo ten years and they’ll make a significantly better game, right?
Oh.
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