Super Mario Kart

"What can I say? The series have really evolved after this game."

Nintendo are known to make one really good game and then all of a sudden it's a series that got to have at least one game on each system. They are also known to throw Mario into any kind of game and make a lot of money on it, because many will buy anything that got Mario in it. Why else would we have a 1000 different sport games with just Mario in the title? I agree that some of them can be very fun to play for a while, but they usually have nothing to do with the sport.

I have been wrong before so I might be wrong about this too, but I think the trend with adding Mario to sport games started with this racing game. It's also one of the most copied game forumla that exist. Not only have Nintendo made a few sequels but without this game we would've never seen Diddy Kong Racing, Crash Team Racing, Speed Freaks, Chocobo Racing or any of the other Kart games on the PSX including one with the Muppets and another one with Disney's Chip and Dale.

The first thing you do on the title screen is to choose if you want to play alone or with a friend. I haven't tried it myself but I think you can unlock everything no matter how many players you are. After that you select what kind of game mode you want play, I will explain them all later. Finally you choose which difficulty you want to play, and the game also goes faster depending on which difficulty you choose. When you are done the game asks you if you are sure that you want to play with these settings and then you will do the most important choice in the game, to pick a character.

There are a total of eight different characters in this game, however there could just have been 4. Each character have a clone that's almost identical in every status. I think the reason behind this is because two players can't be the same character so to avoid that two players would fight over who was first to select Koopa Troopa (everyone loves him) they made Toad almost identical.

Koopa Troopa and Toad are the best when it comes to cornering and acceleration but they got the lowest top speed. Despite their low max speed they are the two fanfavorites and also the perfect choice for beginners. Princess Peach and Yoshi are another clone pair, they both got great acceleration and max speed, but they are much more difficult to control because their cornering aren't as good.

As you would expect the two Mario brothers Mario and Luigi are two clones when it comes to good allround driving.They aren't bad in anything but are not great in anything either, which also makes them as good rookie characters. The last two are Bowser and Donkey Kong Jr, and just like what anyone can figure out these are the two heaviest guys with the best max speed but are the most challenging to control which makes them the best for advanced players.

The game play in Super Mario Kart is really easy to explain. There are a total of 4 different cups which each contains 5 different stages. You face the 7 other racers on a stage, and the goal is to have the lead when you have raced 5 laps. If you finish 1st, you get 9 points, 2nd gives you 6, 3rd place gives you 3 points and 4th only gives you one. If you can't even be in the better half you will lose on life and have to play through the stage again. When you have cleared the 5th stage on each cup you can get a medal if you ended up in the top 3.

Beside from only trusting your racing skills, you can drive over squares marked with ? signs to get a power up that you can use. It can either be two coins, a turbo mushroom, a jump feather, a starman, a banana peel or a green/red shell or even a lightning (But these are rare). In almost every stage you can only get one power up each lap, and since the power up is completely random it won't be the reason if you finish first or not. No in order to win you need to learn how to drive on each stage.

As I said before there are many different modes in this game. First of all there's Mario Kart GP, which is the only mode where you face CPU players. If you play alone then you can also select the time trial mode where you are all alone on a stage and your opponent is the clock. This mode can also be used as a practice mode. If you play with a friend there's also the match race mode where the two players face each other in a race without CPU racers. Finally two players can also battle each other in a battle mode where you have to pick up power ups and use them on the other player. The first player that hits the other three times wins.

I know many will see this review and freak out of the review. Well there are many things that I didn't like with this game. First of all is the simple graphic I understand that SNES is an old system and that this was impressive when it came out, but look at the stages. They are so flat, with next to no backgrounds at all. F-Zero was a launch title for the SNES and it looks much better. I want some background that makes it feels like I'm driving in the Mushroom Kingdom. If the stages are looking this boring then it's not so fun to play.

Second of all there's almost no speed at all in this game, it's a lot more important to be able to take the turns in this game. This would be fine if the control didn't make the karts really hard to control. I know that some after much playing manages to get into it and handles the turns without any trouble at all, but that takes a lot of time. I mean how much sense does it make that you have to use a jump button in almost every corner in order to be good in this racing game?

And finally it's the unfair difficulty. Lets say that you know how you are supposed to drive in a stage and takes the first place. In the next stage you start as No 1 and if you are good with the turbo start the CPU will never bother you again, while it's next to impossible to get back at the top if you once during a race are in the last place. To make it even more worse is that the CPU don't get the same power ups as you, no they got a unique one depending on which character it's. Worst are the two Mario Brothers who can at any time get a starman. Why can't I get any special power ups.

But that's not enough, a lot of the heavy characters can also push the lighter character way to far. I don't know how many times it happened that I feel out of the stage, and just when I got back on the track either Bowser or Donkey Kong Jr rammed me and I once again flew out of the stage and was now dead last, with 0 chance to get a good place. If you want to get a gold medal on a cup, you almost have to drive flawless, and this is on the medium difficulty, not the hard one.

I have to admit that I it was Mario Kart 64 that made me interested in the series in the first place, which might explain why I don't like the difficulty (it's no secret that most of the other games in the series are ridiculous easy) but I really think it's unfair, and the Mario Kart series is all about easy fun gameplay that anyone can enjoy. Super Mario Kart on the other hand focus on the hardcore players, and personally I think F-Zero on the same system is a much better option then. I can understand why some still consider this to be the best in the series, but to me the challenge doesn't make up for the fact that this game isn't as fun to play as the others, even if it's the most fair one if you want to just face you friends and don't play with the unfair and cheating CPU.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 05/12/09

Game Release: Super Mario Kart (EU, 01/21/93)