The Mario Kart Retrospective. Part Eight - Mario Kart 8

In August 1992, Nintendo launched a game that would give birth to one of its most popular and most successful franchises, that game was Super Mario Kart. The Mario Kart series has sold more then ninety million copies over two decades across seven different console editions of the game. Over the next few weeks in the lead-up to the latest game in the series launching (Mario Kart 8, out on the 30th of May), we'll be taking a lookback at the games which made the Mario Kart name one of the most loved in gaming.







Super Mario Kart began life as a generic karting game, its intention was to create a two player same-screen racing game to contrast an earlier Nintendo release, F-Zero. Like F-Zero, SMK used the Mode 7 graphics engine. Mode 7 was a form of texture mapping which allowed a plane to be rotated and scaled, giving a pseudo-three-dimensional appearance.




Super Mario Kart included three game modes: Grand Prix, Time Trial and Battle modes. It also featured eight characters from previous Nintendo titles (six of which have appeared in every Mario Kart title), and twenty tracks based on locations from Super Mario World, Nintendo's platforming masterclass. Super Mario Kart remains the purists choice, its tight handling and testing difficulty curve still make it one of the finest entries in the series to date, it has stood the test of time well.





So there's the abridged intro, I could have waffled on for longer, but I think we all know what we're dealing with here. Now it's over to you. What are your thoughts on entry number one on the Mario Kart Retrospective? Is this still the pinnacle of the series? Is it one you're prepared to forget or ignore? Share your thoughts and memories below. Thanks for reading, and get involved!

Woo, great job Dusty!  

Now, my thoughts.  Firstly, a disclaimer.  I have played this game exactly once: I played one Grand Prix and three battles with a human opponent, a couple of months ago.  I lost six out of seven contests.  So there's the pinch of salt to take my comments with.

I'd say that you can't forget SMK, purely because it's what started the series.  As anything other than a history piece, though, I'm happy to leave it by the wayside.  Reasons why I believe it's lagging behind in the Mario Kart stakes:

• On a personal note, I don't care that much about handling.  So long as I can do a good powerslide, and other people online can't snake, I'm fine.  The other points are (I believe) less subjective.
  
• It's aged.  Visually and musically, it can't compete with the later entries.
  
• The tracks are flat, and less impressive with it.  Many of them are similar in aesthetic too.  The only one that sticks in my mind is Rainbow Road.  (Obviously that might change if I'd played them more.)
  
• The AI is the least realistic in the series.  One item each, only, and the other racers come in the same order every time.
  
• And the big one: no four-player split-screen.  Two-player may have been great at the time, but it's since been outclassed.

I can see why it would have been great, mind-blowing, revolutionary when it came out as the first in its series.  Nowadays?  Meh.  That said, remember the pinch of salt.  There's a particular CVG-er who loves it to pieces, but that's "over there" for you.

Oh, and here's the one piece of music from that game I feel is worthy of comment in this era.  Even then, it's been outclassed - by itself, as much as anything else.  (And here's an acapella version, for Jay.  )

How does this thread already have over 300 views?

I loved SMK back in the day. It was probably my most played SNES game (alongside Super Mario All Stars) but I agree with Balla about how aged it is. I picked it up from the VC and it didn't get played a whole lot.

I've nothing against the retro style of Super Mario Kart - Super Circuit is one of my favourites - but I didn't get along too well with SMK. As Balla said though, you can't forget its importance to the series.

Also, how does this thread have over 500 views already?   

As I reflect back on my earliest experiences of Super Mario Kart, I find it difficult to think about the game without considering the one I played before it, Mario Kart 64. Whereas I'd been playing MK 64 since 1997, it was only after getting a SNES with ten games in a swap with a mate for an unofficial N64 Rumble Pak (honestly) in 2000 that I first had a shot on SMK.

I felt the same way about Super Mario Kart to Mario Kart 64 as I did to F-Zero after I'd played F-Zero X, and Wave Race (GB) after I'd played Wave Race 64. First impressions weren't great. In my mind, SMK didn't have the character of it's sequel, and I missed the super-wide, mega-long tracks, the Mario enemies on the tracks (examples being the moles on Moo Moo Farm) and even the routines of the opponents AI (where you'd always have two racers right up your arse, no matter what). I couldn't for the life of me get used to the handling either.

That said, I always appreciated the hardware it was running on (unlike Balladeer, from the looks of things), and I really enjoyed the challenge that came in the latter stages of the game. The track design was great too - fair enough, I didn't think there was anything as good as Bowser's Castle, Wario Stadium or Royal Raceway, but it was still miles ahead of it's half-baked competitors from the year 2000.

In 2000, I never thought it was a bad game at all; just awfully different from the one I played relentlessly on the N64. Nowadays, having played all of it's sequels and having gradually come to appreciate the brilliance of the game so much more, I'd definitely call it a series highlight...but as you'll read over the next six weeks, I think Mario Kart a game series that is largely made up of highlights.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

That said, I always appreciated the hardware it was running on (unlike Balladeer, from the looks of things)...

I disagree with this.  I understand that the machine it was running on was the cause of... well, most of the negatives I mentioned.  (Four-player might have been possible with Multitap?  I dunno.)  That's why I said what I did about the game being a revolution at the time.  But in the modern day, it's competing against six other games on more powerful machines.  Perhaps it's therefore inevitable that it would come up short, but yet so many people seem to think otherwise. Some still think that it's the best game in the series, and I just don't see how that can be the case.

And I didn't try those competitors from 2000, apart from DKR, so I didn't have those to compare the tracks against.  I just had other Mario Karts - which, as you say, are pretty much all highlights of their genre and respective eras.

It doesn't read or suggest that you appreciate that Super Mario Kart couldn't really have been anything else, mind. I'll be interested in reading how you feel about the N64, GBA, GameCube and DS versions by comparison to the latter games that run on much more powerful, advanced and 'capable' hardware.

"The AI is the least realistic in the series" is a criticism of a game featuring cartoon dinosaurs in go-karts that I'd have thought only David Jenkins would approach.   

Fair enough: I'll say it here. I don't think that, given the available technology, SMK could have been a better game than it is, with the possible exception of including Multitap-enabled four-player (and I don't know about that). Its only flaw is that time has marched on quite a way, but that is a big one compared to its sequels. As you'll hear later, I also feel that technology has hamstrung the N64, GBA and DS games to varying extents.

As for the AI, it's all suspension of disbelief, isn't it? In the same way that you could be happily reading a story about pseudoscience and other planets, and suddenly two characters who have had no chemistry up until now fall in love, breaking you right out of the immersion. You accept one form of non-realism, but find the other jarring. So it is here... well, that last sentence is, at any rate.

When I'm playing on my own, I want the computer to make me imagine, to the best of its ability, that I'm playing against invisible humans controlling cartoon dinosaurs in go-karts. That they're subject to the same rules and regulations as I am, but just aren't quite as good. Things that dispel this illusion include them having one item each, some characters being as "intelligent" as others but somehow faster, and the CPU being unable to drive around a banana peel which is easily visible. (Seriously, MK8, sort that last one out, will you?)

Being the first Mario Kart game I played, I still hold this in high regard. When it became available on the Wii Shop in 2010, I was all over it. There was a chance that it might tarnish my great memories of the game, as can be the case with old games, and after a few minutes of play, I thought I'd made a massive mistake. But, given time, things really started to click, and I started to love it all over again. This wasn't just a nostalgia trip, this was a game that was still incredibly tight. I spent so long time trialling on it, I even surprised myself how addicted I became. The visuals, to some, may be extremely dated, I personally still love the Mode 7 graphics, they have a real charm about them. Same goes for the music, I really have a fondness for the tunes of this game.

To me, this is still one of the top entries in the Mario Kart series, I'll never tire of playing it.

Super Mario Kart was my first Mario Kart game and still the one I hold most dear in my heart. At the time a truly incredible game: I spent hours trying to shave milliseconds off my Rainbow Road time trial record. The cups were just a means to that end for young me. Horrifyingly, my Wii struggled to connect to the Internet on the day SMK was released. After an hour or so of wrangling the download came through and... oh.
 
Time has not been terribly kind... although not to SMK, to me. Later Mario Karts have given you the support of great items when you're not doing so well -  that doesn't happen in SMK. I've grown too accustomed to that safety net and my skills have dulled. In the past I'd take all the cups with ease with Toad: now I'm shunted off the road, mow the grass, drown and generally struggle to make it to a respectable position.
 
As for the multiplayer, Nintendo shied away from using the Multitap as it was not one of their peripherals (we had one because of Bomberman, natch). My brothers and I tried to support each other in the cups and didn't play competitively all that much. The arguments... 

Super Mario Kart is timeless. It's far more than something that should only be recognised for what it did back in 1993 (it's not "meh" at all!), and playing it in 2014 is refreshing: there's nothing else quite like it.

I first played this in late 2008, and I have to admit that at first it was a bit of a culture shock to me, even when compared to Super Circuit (which is quite a different beast of a game despite them both being 'Mode7'). But Super Mario Kart is just genius, and really does deserve to be treasured, given how unique it is to the rest of the series.

As Phillips mentioned, Super Mario Kart's track design is superb. The tracks are quite narrow, almost vicious karting arenas, where you really feel the tension of being packed in with other karters, and of which you really have to master the driving model (oh, how amazing drifting is!) to succeed, particularly in the faster classes. From Mario Circuit 3's mushroom-friendly gap between the blocks, to *that* jump in Ghost Valley 2, to the (bloody annoying) ice cubes in Vanilla Lake, there's plenty of variety here, but also alterations to the driving model that haven't really been felt since: Vanilla Lake, Donut Plains and Choco Island all feel very different to drive on, for example, leading to more mayhem.

Track design and excellent handling model aside, it's such a unique racer. Everything melds together to make it the most exciting single player experience in the series, where split-second wins are as heart-in-mouth as F Zero's, where the AI will make you hate previously beloved characters, where you'll find yourself retrying a Grand Prix hundreds of times to place first.

This unique blend hasn't been bettered. Subsequent Mario Karts have (mostly) been amazing but I don't believe it's fair to compare them to this, since Super Mario Kart is similar, yes, but yet so different at the same time. Super Mario Kart excels at what later Mario Karts didn't do so well, but likewise it can't possibly offer the same experience that later Mario Karts offer, which is a genius formula in its own right too (in multiplayer, everyone in the game has a chance of winning, so you'll never experience someone miles ahead of the pack like in other arcade racers, and thus races are always eventful).

Super Mario Kart is a case of less being more, and takes us back to a time when Nintendo racers felt inherently arcade-y, just like Wave Race 64, or F Zero.

I think Balladeer made a point of the AI being less realistic, which is absolutely true, but I'd put this as a plus really. Given a game is at its essence a set of rules, Super Mario Kart's works very well in its favour and again makes the racing even more vicious and challenging (essentially since you're only really worrying about the item your rival uses, it also illustrates more trade-offs between character choices, I usually go for Toad since Peach's mushrooms aren't too annoying).

I was going to play some Wave Race 64 later tonight (that's another great game that hasn't aged a bit unless you *really* care about graphics), but I think I'll play this...

I assume we're all done with Super Mario Kart then, let's move on...

Mario Kart 64, Nintendo 64 (1996, 1997)

Super Mario Kart was a success. In 1996, we got a second taste of karting action in the shape of Mario Kart 64, which made its home on the N64: Nintendo's first 3D console. Gone was Mode 7, in its place were polygon-based graphics. Back again were the classic Grand Prix, Time Trial and Battle modes, the latter of which supported four player split-screen play.




Mario Kart 64's is arguably one of the greatest muliplayer games ever made, where it lead, others followed. It paved the way for the Kart games that we're familiar with today, doing away with SMK's five lap five race Grand Prix formula. It also introduced items and ideas that are staples of the series now.




What say you? Seems many of you had your first taste of karting with Mario Kart 64, how highly do you rate it?

Oh boy.  Just looking at those screens bring the nostalgia rushing back.  Here we go, then...

Like many of you, MK64 was my first entry into the series, so I have some nostalgic fondness for it.  I consider it and MKSC to be transition points, from the pure racing-heavy SMK to the madcap mayhem of later entries.  It still feels "purer" to me than many of the later games, although again, I've not played SMK much.


Right, let's get the negatives out of the way.  It's aged: less so than SMK, but still, those sprite-based racers look decidedly peculiar in the modern age, and Yoshi sounds odd too.  The track design is highly variable, with bona fide classics like Sherbet Land and Bowser's Castle mixing with some of the worst tracks in the series, such as Wario Stadium (come at me gents) and Rainbow Road.  (The Battle Mode had Big Donut too.)  The CPUs can't throw shells for some reason.  And in the modern day, firing off a red shell, only for it to go off at a right angle and make that horrible "clonk" sound as it hits the wall, is heavily frustrating.

Finally, purer as it is, I don't like it as much as the later, more madcap instalments.  That's a completely subjective thing, and there's a limit to how far I take it (Baby Park < Wario Colosseum, say), but it's how I feel.  Those are my negatives: take them as you will.


Block Fort, four players.  Green shells at the ready.  The shells last forever, and the bottom floor soon turns into utter carnage.  

Despite the aforementioned Big Donut, that alone (also Skyscraper!) means that in my eyes, MK64 has the best battle mode of the series; not to mention the lack of stupid new modes or unnecessary changes to a formula that worked perfectly.  (Also, it had you turn into a bomb when you died.  What's happened to that in later games?)  In fact, I'd say that only DD!! can compete as far as multiplayer is concerned: SMK lacked four-player, MKWii's frame-rate chugged like a rugger player on his stag do, and the portables required everyone to have a console and a copy of the game (and, for MKSC, a link cable).  The only sour points were that it was frequently possible for someone to get too far ahead, due to the paucity of blue shells and red shells being stupid; and that drop in Wario Stadium.  I like the blue shell's balancing properties, but there are limits.

When I went back to the game (relatively) recently, the first thing I realised was that I couldn't handle the pace.  Why has the series slowed down so much?  Maybe that's also why we now have a problem with snaking, because drifting worked fine in MK64 (better than fine, in fact - best powerslide of the games after SMK? Yup) and I don't think that problem was ever mentioned in N64 or its magazine contemporaries.  I said earlier that handling didn't matter much to me, and it doesn't, but speed does.  Zoom!

Finally, when the tracks were good, they were very good.  Bowser's Castle, Moo Moo Farm, Mario Circuit (an otherwise dull-as-ditchwater course redeemed by that shortcut)... and you could drive around Princess Peach's castle.  If that's not a selling point, I don't know what is.


To sum up, MK64 benefits from having pace and a great four-player mode, especially battles, although it's hindered (in my eyes) by some dodgy courses and being more of a "pure" racer than its descendants.  And that Wario Stadium lightning-drop.  Bloody horrible thing.

(And I'm guessing that everyone on the Internet/Forumotion was searching for Mario Kart after the MK8 announcement, and this thread got a ridiculous amount of external views.)

As I said in the MK8 thread this was my first Kart game and will always hold a spot in my mind for a great game in it's day. Loved the tracks and in some like Yoshi's finding new ways to go to shave a few seconds off your time and so on.

Then there was Wario Stadium with the brilliant and also infamous (in my household anyway) shortcut by jumping over the wall which wasn't that hard to do but if you felt like a prick you'd just jump over and be on your merry way.

One thing I remember was in the Skyscraper battle stage my brother and I would first go around and try and get as many bomb/Fake item boxes and put them all over the gaps where you could fall down as much as we can to make things a bit trickier in turn by setting up traps at the ramps. I really did love this game

I did that with the fake item boxes as well! Good times.

Remember those console pods they used to have in the games shops? I'd already played Super Mario 64 in the Beatties nearby on one of those, and hated Wave Race 64 nearer my house (I didn't understand how to play it as an eight year old, natch), but Mario Kart 64 and I all started in the old Woolworths that was just round the corner from the Central Station in Glasgow on one of those N64 pods. I think that was the experience that really put me over the top with wanting an N64.

That was a long six months between playing Mario Kart 64 on Woolies and getting my own N64. I must have thought about the console every other day, when I was slumming it on the Mega Drive (great console, but what looked better when you were eight: Golden Axe or Mario Kart 64?). I got one a few days before my ninth birthday as I'd been off school and I think my Mum felt a wee bit sorry for me. When I was out of my room, by complete surprise my Mum set up my first TV (a 12" Daewoo!), hooked up to an N64 with Mario Kart 64 plugged in. I didn't know I was getting an N64, and I went fucking mental - I was well chuffed!

I played the living fuck out of Mario Kart 64 for about two years after, and I'd say I'd stick it on for a game at least fortnightly until probably 2009/2010. Diddy Kong Racing didn't get that much replaying, and not even F-Zero X did. Come to think of it, I don't think anything did. Mario Kart 64 is monumental in my gaming life: as the game that got the whole ball rolling with me and the Nintendo 64; as the game that became a Sunday afternoon ritual; as the multiplayer classic; as the game that's gifted me and my friends so many laughs and catchphrases... and probably so much more. It's very firmly in my top ten of all time. I absolutely adore this game, certainly as much in 2014 as I did down at Woolies seventeen years ago. I think it's a classic.

Bump.  Because see my signature.  The amount of people who have said how much they love MK64 really does not tally with the number of posts in this thread this week. Surely somebody must think I'm a moron because I hate Wario Stadium? Surely?

I hate Mario Kart 64 All be it it's one I didn't play til after MKWii so it was incredibly dated.

Balladeer wrote:

Surely somebody must think I'm a moron because I hate Wario Stadium?  Surely?

Yup. You big idiot. xxx

Mario Kart 64 was the first N64 game I played, over at a friend's house. Oddly the thing I remember most clearly is the battle mode, I think largely because as 10 year olds we found the idea of bombs on wheels utterly hysterical. Then I got a second-hand copy myself and played it to death, occasionally convincing my family to join me, and occasionally getting friends round to do 4-player.

Several years later I took it to uni in my second year and my flatmate and I played it every day after lectures. I had MKWii as well but she had the nostalgia for it because she played it in her school's common room all the time in her last year of school (both her school and mine had a common room with an N64 for the 6th years, and I've come to wonder if it was the norm for Scottish high schools).

I don't know if I'd say it was my favourite Mario Kart, but I imagine it's probably the one I've played the most purely because it's the one most people know how to play - ask about Double Dash or MKWii and the answers vary, but 64 - everyone's played that. And as a result I'm more attached to the courses in 64. I'm very excited to play Royal Raceway again in MK8 because I always thought it was underrated, but I don't have a Wii U so I'm not sure when I'll get to try it out, HD style.

That's an interesting point you've raised, Rum. I barely know anybody that's played Mario Kart Wii, despite it being one of the top five best-selling games ever. 64 must be a generational thing.

I'd be interested in hearing what some of the older forumites think about that - is the earlier Super Mario Kart the one they're more attached to? Likewise, if that LuigiSkyWii (?) guy hasn't already dingied us, I'd have been interested to hear what he had to say - if he's listed his age correctly, he's have been six when MKWii came out.

Andy hates an N64 game, now there's a surprise


I'm with Cap on this one, I played this so much when it first came out, I still remember the dingy little shop where I bought a second hand copy of it. Can't remember exactly why I didn't get the game brand new and on launch, may have been down to not being as switched on to release schedules as I am now, plus Nintendo 64 games were damn expensive back then (roughly £50, and people complain about game prices now!)

I can't remember how teenage me felt about the shift of styles between Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64, probably happier that 64 was more fun compared to its daddy.

For about a year of my schooling life, either in 1999 or 2000, Saturday was the day myself and a few mates would gather at one of their houses for an all-day Nintendo 64 play session. The most played games were Goldeneye 007 and this. They were some fine days I can tell, would give anything to have more of them.

I'd be hard pushed to think of a more enjoyable game mode than 64's Battle mode. To me, this is still the finest local multiplayer in any Kart game (second best probably goes to Double Dash, more on that in a few weeks time). Four player Battle mode on Block Fort would rank as one of my favourite multiplayer games of all time. They don't make them like this anymore.

I gave MK64 a quick blast yesterday to see how things held up. I've often maintained that this is the Mario Kart that has ages the worst, Nintendo 64 games have graphically aged pretty badly, nasty jaggy edges all over the place, brr. And yet, I was surprised at how well this held up. Handling felt as tight as it ever did, and I was pleasantly surprised by this. Just a shame I don't have three people to hand to go for a few rounds of Block Fort, oh well.


@Balladeer: I think you're a moron for hating Wario Stadium.

That makes two of you, hooray!  I wish there was some way of playing Block Fort, infinite shells, online. Wishful thinking. (If only they'd kept the infinite shell thing for DD!! - imagine multiple giant Bowser shells bouncing around all over the place. More wishful thinking.)

I'd love if MK8 included an online four player only battle mode, they're the thing I miss most about modern Mario Kart games.

Dusty Knackers wrote:

For about a year of my schooling life, either in 1999 or 2000, Saturday was the day myself and a few mates would gather at one of their houses for an all-day Nintendo 64 play session. The most played games were Goldeneye 007 and this. They were some fine days I can tell, would give anything to have more of them.

That's something I didn't give enough of a mention. I used to have folk from all around my street and school come round to mine (or I went to theirs) for games of Mario Kart 64 (and WCW/NWO World Tour). I'd remember being well excited at the thought of Easter Holidays that year as I knew I'd be spending my two weeks off playing N64 with all my mates. That's over sixteen years ago now!

My mate had a summer of empties about a decade ago, the N64 with Mario Kart and four pads was as much a focal point as getting pished and trying to get your Nat King.

~

Who'd everybody go in Mario Kart 64, by the way? I asked that on NGamer years ago, and we agreed that you only ever went the one guy. I was Wario.

Not me! I was Yoshi or Bowser, depending on how aggressive I was feeling. And Toad for time trials.