Mario Kart Super Circuit

"Super Circuit suffers from a pitiful Battle mode and several gameplay problems"

Several other reviewers have lauded Mario Kart Super Circuit, so I figure I'll chime in with a discussion of some of the game's negative aspects. As you can tell from my rating, this is very much a solid game, but I will argue that it does suffer from several flaws and does not merit a perfect score. To begin, let's take a look at Super Circuit's Battle mode and other multiplayer features.

MULTIPLAYER GAMING
Like its Kart predecessors, Super Circuit includes three multiplayer modes: Grand Prix, Versus racing, and Battle. In its advertising campaign for this game, Nintendo has been very vocal in emphasizing that you can play multiplayer with just one copy of Super Circuit. Well, I tried doing just that, and I was utterly dismayed by what Intelligent Systems (the game's programmers) had to offer. With only one Game Pak, you're stuck with racing as Yoshi (each player's Yoshi is a different color) on the first four tracks of the SNES Mario Kart's Mushroom Cup. All I have to say is this: if we want to play the first four tracks of the original Mario Kart, then we would obviously turn on the SNES and play it! I understand that there are hardware limitations with only one Pak, but at least let people play four SUPER CIRCUIT tracks instead.

So, with single-Pak play offering little in the way of multiplayer modes, we turn to multi-Pak gaming. With multiple Paks, you can play any of the available courses in Grand Prix or Versus mode, and there are no substantial problems with either of those options. However, Kart veterans know that the real multiplayer fun lies within Battle mode. Back in the days of the SNES, one-on-one Battle duels -- whether in person or across the nation via the XBand modem -- provided some of the greatest classic moments and memories ever enjoyed by video gamers. Unfortunately, Kart 64's Battle mode did not live up to this massive legacy, and -- as hard as it may be to believe -- Mario Kart Super Circuit fares even WORSE.

The four Battle courses in this game are TINY and completely unimaginative. The worst example consists of a small square track with a couple straight roads going through the middle. Another course is nothing more than a plot of sand with several deep ponds strewn across the map (if your kart drops into one of these ponds and Lakitu pulls you out, you lose a balloon). I cannot envision any scenario in which players would NOT get tired of these inane Battle courses. It would have been one thing if the courses had been EITHER boring OR small, but for them to suffer from BOTH of these problems is unacceptable and an embarrassment to the Mario Kart franchise. Intelligent Systems turned what should have been the best part of the game into a pathetic, lazy attempt at course design, and that is unacceptable.

Indeed, the programmers would have been better served to have just left in the four Battle courses from the SNES Kart, but since they chose to rehash the Mushroom Cup courses for single-Pak versus racing, they probably felt that they'd be going overboard by doing the same thing for Battle mode. Regardless of what they thought, I very well know that the ability to play the original SNES battle courses with FOUR players would have been very, very nice. Unfortunately, we are left with a Battle mode which not only suffers from poor course design, but also from problems in gameplay.

SHELL PHYSICS
Unbelievably, red shells behave DIFFERENTLY in Grand Prix mode than they do in Battle Mode. In Grand Prix mode, they've been granted much more homing ability than they had in the SNES Kart; they can now turn some corners and will travel much farther to chase down a racer. However, in Battle mode, they have almost NO homing ability whatsoever! In Battle, all they can muster up is limited lateral movement. They almost never turn corners, so if your opponent isn't more or less straight ahead of you, you're going to have a very hard time striking him/her with a red shell. I actually would have no problem whatsoever with this difference, but the thing is that the Battle courses (to reiterate) are TINY, and it seems like Intelligent Systems simply programmed out the homing ability of red shells to compensate for their laziness in designing the Battle courses. The fact that this compensation is so obvious serves to further detract from the fun of Super Circuit's Battle mode.

A more minor (yet still annoying) point has to do with the green shell. Now, while you're navigating a hairpin turn (or doing anything else that makes your kart turn leftward or rightward), firing a green shell will make it go straight ahead (down the middle of the screen) RATHER than in the direction that your kart is actually facing. In SNES Kart, turning left would make a green shell fire leftward, and turning right would make a shell fire rightward, and this was a far more intuitive system -- not to mention that it was the very basis for many Kart players' green shell sharpshooting. Since Super Circuit has taken away this bit of common-sense physics, it's also taken away the fun of gunning down Battle opponents using only green shells (which was always good for a little boasting and trash talk in the days of the SNES version). Simply put, aiming green shells now involves more guesswork than it had in any previous incarnation of Mario Kart.

I do have to credit Intelligent Systems on one truly great addition: in Super Circuit, if you hold Down while using a red shell, your racer will set it like a mine -- and whenever someone drives by, it activates and chases after him/her. It's like the Mario Kart equivalent of a Proximity Mine, and in many cases, this new function of the red shell is more fun to use and more productive than simply firing at someone in front of you (especially in Battle Mode, where -- as mentioned previously -- the shells' homing capabilities are severely lacking). However, this is the ONLY change to the shell system which has successfully added an extra dimension to Mario Kart's gameplay. With that said, there is one last matter of contention which I want to discuss:

CHEAPNESS.
If you play through the game's cups and engine classes in order, the final track you face will be the SNES-edition Rainbow Road at 150cc. It should be noted that this track now lacks the glowing Thwomps which helped make the original version difficult. But what REALLY should be noted is how Intelligent Systems programmed the course to make up for those missing Thwomps. When I played the track, I led the whole way and eventually won; HOWEVER, during the fourth and fifth laps I was struck by other racers' Boo items.. SEVEN DIFFERENT TIMES! In Super Circuit, Boos revolve around your kart, slowing it down and taking away your coins one by one. The seven Boos I faced were very successful in accomplishing their goal: I went from a coin total of thirtysomething at the beginning of the fourth lap to six at the end of the race, and a substantial lead over the second-place Yoshi turned into a photo finish. For the sake of its own physical safety, my GBA should be glad I won, because I was NOT happy about the moronic ''challenge'' that I had been forced to deal with. One may attempt to reason that the computer-controlled racers really did pick up Boos over and over again, but seeing as how you rarely encounter them in the usual Grand Prix race, I seriously doubt that being attacked by seven in two laps was a legitimate coincidence. My question is, if the programmers must resort to cheap tactics after removing the Thwomps from the stage, then why remove the Thwomps at all? There are, after all, Thwomps in the Super Circuit Bowser Castle tracks, so it's not as if they weren't readily available. I can understand when a programmer tries to legitimately increase the challenge factor of a game WITHIN the game's framework, but I do NOT appreciate deliberate unfairness.

CONCLUSION
To reiterate, I have intentionally been focusing on the negative aspects of the game; I do not feel that it is perfect (a 10 out of 10 is better suited to games which meet ALL of a gamer's expectations, and the Battle mode alone is enough to drop Super Circuit from perfection). Nonetheless, Intelligent Systems did a good job of combining the better aspects of SNES Kart and Kart 64, and while the final product leaves a bit to be desired, Super Circuit still ranks among the top five GBA games to have been released so far. With that said, go ahead and pick up a copy -- just don't expect the game to be as innovative or fulfilling as the original Super Mario Kart.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/10/01, Updated 09/10/01