You’re upset about wider courses and straight line tracks or a fucking character being dropped? Cry me a river son, I was there when they changed from digital to analog and Ruined Mario Kart. When they reverted back to flat tracks and Ruined Mario Kart. When they added 2 drivers, removed the jump and Ruined Mario Kart. When they didn’t foresee or left snaking in intentionally and Ruined Mario Kart. When they added Bikes and Ruined Mario Kart. When they added courses from Wii Sports Resort and Ruined Mario Kart. When they fucked up Battle mode and Ruined Mario Kart. When they turned it into a gacha game and Ruined Mario Kart (for real, that shit sucks). Trust me when I say, you’ll get over it, and playing something different is usually better than buying the same game again (which if you were old enough, you would have fucking done already for Mario Kart 8/Deluxe!)
Throughout all this, Nintendo somehow managed to pick up 70 million players. How many of them are hardcore I wonder? Is it the probably small fraction that compete online? The smaller fraction that only guns for world records in Time Trial? Is it the people that just play local with their families and friends?
But I digress. What really pisses me off is when anyone, hardcore or otherwise, shits on one of the older games. The further they go back the more there is to shit on, but the irony is, a lot of what they complain about in the modern releases, has been changing, going in that direction, for over 30 years! And so, I’m here to tell you why Super Mario Kart, the most misunderstood and forgotten game of them all, still has more BITE to it than anything that came after.
Throughout all this, Nintendo somehow managed to pick up 70 million players. How many of them are hardcore I wonder? Is it the probably small fraction that compete online? The smaller fraction that only guns for world records in Time Trial? Is it the people that just play local with their families and friends?
But I digress. What really pisses me off is when anyone, hardcore or otherwise, shits on one of the older games. The further they go back the more there is to shit on, but the irony is, a lot of what they complain about in the modern releases, has been changing, going in that direction, for over 30 years! And so, I’m here to tell you why Super Mario Kart, the most misunderstood and forgotten game of them all, still has more BITE to it than anything that came after.
I first became aware of Super Mario Kart from the very first games magazine I bought, Computer & Video Games (CVG) #133. In that issue they reviewed the game and it scored an impressive 96%. I can’t recall if I actually had my SNES at the time, but it was either just before or just after. Either way, I got the SNES for Super Mario World and Street Fighter 2. I didn’t have money for more games, but that didn’t stop me buying magazines and wishing I did!
Anyway, a local VHS rental store had a SNES setup in some kind of arcade unit where you’d pay a dollar for 10 minutes of gameplay. I’ve tried to find this thing online but with no luck whatsoever. There is something called a “Super System”, but i’m positive the one near me was different. I remember clearly that it had an actual joystick because that was my first time playing Super Mario Kart!
And I absolutely hated it. How did this game get 96%? Well, as it turns out, the game doesn’t play so well with an arcade joystick and buttons. Big surprise, I know! The reviewers at CVG were blessed with normal controllers. But my stupid ass quickly moved onto something else and forgot about the game, until one of my friends happened to pick it up. I remember saying to him “you know, that game is pretty bad”… oh how wrong I was.
Giving it a proper go on several (increasingly more frequent…) visits to his house, I started to see how awesome the game was. We would play Grand Prix mode with the CPU or Battle mode mostly. I would borrow the game for weeks on end long after he lost interest and still play GP. I got so good I made my own little game of tallying up the seconds I won by in each of the 5 courses of a cup. Battle mode was a favourite at sleepovers with friends. All up, we must have poured thousands of hours into the game.
So, why is it awesome? If you’ve seen or read recent reviews of the game, or worse, played it for 5 minutes on NSO and condemned it yourself, you probably think it has “awful controls”, just like I did when I first played it on that arcade unit. Well, i’m here to tell you that that’s a you problem. There is almost no racing game of this era, and hell, since, that controls as tightly as the original Super Mario Kart.
When you first pick up the controller and attempt a powerslide, sure, you’ll slide right off the outside of the track. “Game’s SHIT man!” and turn it off, right? Wrong. It’s not even that complicated! In this game, you simply correct/straighten up the slide with another hop to the opposite side. Bang, you’re not sliding and now you’re screaming directly towards the next corner. I swear, that one little detail is lost on everyone who played a later game in the series first. Perhaps these players are so tuned to analog sticks, they cannot appreciate the immediacy afforded by a dpad. When you slide, you’re on the edge of your seat, about to go off that edge of the course at any second, but then you whip it back in an instant and keep going. The game strikes the perfect balance of the karts feeling completely out of control and yet totally under your control at the same time.
All of a sudden, courses that you could barely navigate before become not just manageable, but demolishable. You’re hugging the inside of corners and dodging obstacles like a racing GOD. You pick up some coins, you notice your speed improves. You don’t hit things for long enough and your engine starts humming at a top speed. Then you notice your character doing an odd tilting animation when you exit a powerslide just right and… is that… a mini-turbo? Yes, yes it is, a fact sadly lost to time and most people playing the series now, I think. Now you’ve entered the holy immersed state and you’re lapping the CPU no problem. Winning by skill and not items (remember this part for later reviews lol). The door to Time Trial mode opens and the glorious optimising begins.
I started by talking about the controls because that is the linchpin which holds the entire game together. But it doesn’t stop there. The courses are designed to take full advantage of them, testing your ability to push the controls to their absolute limit. One thing you might be aware of from reading Mario Kart discussions online, is how people will often complain that the tracks have become too wide. Not so in the original game, where there are often stretches just 3 or 4 karts wide that you have to navigate. This is how you’d start to design a racing game you see, by deciding upon the size of the characters and their relation to the track. When a course is 15-20 times the size of the kart, sure, it’s still a challenge to drive the proper racing line, but it’s not as intense as NEEDING to drive the proper racing line. Nowadays, a track’s design is assessed by its aesthetics, and a “good course” is one with the most interesting theme. Sigh.
So let’s talk about the courses and what makes them awesome. I'm too lazy to post pictures so please view the course maps on the excellent Mario Wiki!
The first course is a simple affair no doubt, but even here you can see the careful consideration of its elements. The first corner? A slight bend. Get that turbo start and whiz around it no problem. Head down the main straight and the next corner is trickier, and you’ve got to navigate pipes to boot. No worries, helps you figure out the correct line. Round that bend and we get our first hairpin, that is quickly followed by another sharp turn. If you’ve got a mushroom or star you can dash across the dirt to cut them out. You’re not done yet though, the lap ends with a sweeping left where you can safely hold that powerslide the whole way through!
Donut Plains 1
Right after the start, the racers converge on a tiny bridge, which incidentally, is great place to drop a hard to avoid banana! But you may notice cornering is a little trickier here, as the dirt is more slippery than the road. As you round the bend you spot a shortcut hole in the wall, but you don’t want to attempt it without a mushroom or a star. Next up is a series of tight but long corners around dirt patches, the first of the different surfaces you’ll come across. You’re likely to accidentally trigger your first mini-turbo around the 2nd of these bends, before the final long turn - where you can take the inside line over the dirt, at the risk of possibly skidding out.
Ghost Valley 1
The difficulty starts to rise on this course, which introduces blocks that disappear if you bump into them, leaving an increasing risk of falling off on later laps. We’ve got a chicane followed by the first of 2 jump bars - there’s no gap, so you’re generally safe (unless you’re sliding off course!), but the next bar shows that you can clear gaps. While you’re taking that you spy another gap to the left that looks like it’d cut off the entire last corner. You’ll need a feather or a very well timed jump at speed to clear that gap though, and you better watch out for the turn at the end, or else it’s off the other side!
Bowser Castle 1
Hazards about in this course. On the first lap, thwomps hover above the course, but from lap 2 onwards, they slam down, potentially restricting your line. We’re introduced to speed boost pads, 2 in quick succession that’ll make the next corner a challenge if you’re not paying attention. Jumps over lava (careful not to go too fast and into the lava!), while avoiding falling thwomps are just before the final turn
Mario Circuit 2
Things have gotten a fair bit more complicated at Mario Circuit. You better hold left immediately at the start to get around the first corner, but then watch out for the pipe chicane afterwards. Get through unscathed and you have some sweeping bends followed by the tightest hairpin so far. Speed boost pads launch you over the track towards the finish line, but be careful where you’re pointing or else you’ll hit the pipes on the other side. Time it just right and you can start your slide in mid-air to nip between them.
Choco Island 1
Game not slippery enough for you? Have some chocolate. If you haven’t mastered straightening out of slides yet, this course will teach you, but not before you hit several piranha plants on the side of the track. Jump bars abound as well, and you’ll need to hit the right ones to avoid the heavy chocolate patches that slow you right down.
Ghost Valley 2
This course starts with a quick turn to the right then left. You’ll see another gap you can clear if you have a feather (or speed and a lot of luck). Else, it’s a slippery wide turn. Lots of the walls have no blocks this time, and some parts of the track are cut away as well. Entering the final straight, stick close to the inside if you can, to hit the speed boost pad. Careful with that jump bar right after though!
Donut Plains 2
A challenging course with many narrow roads, made harder by the slippery dirt. You’ll really have to control your skids to avoid the grass here. Not only that, monty moles threaten to latch onto your kart and slow you down, on several of the corners. Hit jump a few times to shake them off.
Bowser Castle 2
It becomes apparent here that the Bowser stages are tests of endurance, as they’re some of the longest tracks in the game. Filled with 90º turns, this one seems simple but again the thwomps and jumps over lava complicate matters. You do have a few choices when it comes to which way to go mid course - including a jump over the lava if you’ve got a feather. Towards the end, you’ll really have to watch your speed or end up in the drink!
Mario Circuit 3
We’re back on the road but just because you’re not sliding as much doesn’t mean you can coast through this course. Pretty much every turn is tight, and one midway is the sharpest hairpin the game. You can still take it at speed, but you’ll want to have the right line to avoid the 4 pipes on the exit. Towards the end there’s a gap in the barrier if you have a mushroom to clear the dirt, otherwise you’re taking some turns flanked by pipes that’ll get in your way if you’re not careful.
Koopa Beach 1
Slippery when wet is the name of the game here. A short course that is essentially just a circle, but there are some shortcuts you can take if you brave the shallow water. Also be sure to avoid the mossy part near the end, which really slows you down.
Choco Island 2
Now your slide control is really put to the test, as the roads are getting thinner and rough outer areas threaten to slow you down at every step. The hardest part is the series of tight turns into a thin stretch right at the beginning, but you can make it easier if you can take the shortcut through the wall gap. Boost or jump through the chocolate patch to avoid slowing down there too, but watch your angle on those jump pads on the exit!
Vanilla Lake 1
Oh boy, not content with slippery chocolate, the developers saw fit to test us with the ultimate in slippy-slidey surfaces now - everyone’s favourite, the ice course. The path is small and flanked by thick, slower snow patches, deep water and blocks. This time the blocks are there to stop you, but there’s a trick to them: If you jump as you’re about to hit one, you’ll propel forward without losing much speed. Try and keep it straight!
Bowser Castle 3
We’ve reached the final Bowser Castle course and definitely the most challenging. There’s lots of lava jumps including several across a split path. They’re not too different speed wise, so my advice is to take the path with the least CPU travelling it. Afterwards, Thwomps threaten in a tight space so you better hope one of them is up in the air! Rounding that corner you’ve got the choice of 3 lanes, but you’ll only get your choice if you’ve mastered the slide. The left and right sides have a boost pad but that’ll make the next turn trickier. Avoid the thwomps again and you’re onto the final stretch.
Mario Circuit 4
The final Mario Circuit will test your racing lines to the max. If you’re not taking the corners optimally, you’re definitely going to end up on the slow dirt. Avoid the pipes and keep it together, try and take the shortcut through the gap in the wall near the end.
Donut Plains 3
This course is home to some of the thinnest roads in the game. Control your skids carefully on the dirt to enter the bridges straight, and be careful to jump over the holes in the bridge too. On the exits, make sure you have the right line or else you’ll end up off course and in another water hazard
Koopa Beach 2
This water course presents a different challenge to the first. On the right you’ve got the water and on the left the moss both threatening to slow you down. Halfway through the course you have no choice but to slip through the shallow water, where you have to avoid cheep cheeps and deep water. It’s tempting to cut close to the moss near the end, but it can cost you the race if you’re not careful.
Ghost Valley 3
The most difficult ghost course owing to all holes and wall-less sides. There’s a shortcut on the right, after the items boxes should you have a feather, but make sure you’re lined up well or else the next section with no walls will be tricky
Vanilla Lake 2
Is this course the ultimate test of your sliding technique? Perhaps. Here, you’ve still got to avoid several hazards, most notably the entire centre of the track being water. Of course, the developers were nice enough to really test you by putting obvious sheet of ice shortcuts throughout. A real pro will navigate this course in seconds thanks to those, but regular people are best off taking it slow and just cutting a little of water at the tips of the corner.
Rainbow Road
It turns out that this is the ultimate test of your sliding technique. Walls? Where we’re going we don’t need walls. Not content with making the entire track surrounded by death, there’s also the hypnotic effect of the colours, carefully (or cruelly?) placed jump bars, and even some thwomps to deal with. Mastery of this course means mastery of the game though!
Ok, for all those modern players, yes, the courses are flat. Boo hoo. Maybe, just maybe it was a good thing. Try playing a racing game from this era with elevation and tell me how well you can see the corners going up a hill!
Not just the courses by themselves are great, but the order they’re arranged is too. There’s an escalation of difficulty throughout each cup, that lets off a little for the first course of the next. It actually makes me wonder how they approach difficulty design for DLC tracks these days.
Another important decision in the design of the game was the length of the tracks. It was said in some interview that they couldn’t do a 2 player F-Zero due to the size of the tracks, and so the tracks in Super Mario Kart were made shorter to accommodate multiplayer modes. You’ll often hear people say that F-Zero is the faster game and well, that doesn’t paint the whole picture. The cars may go faster, but with the courses far shorter here, often the sense of speed can be similar or even stronger. Particularly on Rainbow Road, you barely have a second to blink before each straight ends and the corner looms. It’s an incredibly intense experience, something that unfortunately has been completely lost in the later games, as Rainbow Road became more about the spectacle than the challenge.
These short courses also tie into the fact you do 5 laps instead of 3 as seen in later games. This is the only game in the series to have 5 laps, but given the length of courses, it was the right choice. You get to spend a good amount of time on the courses and learn their intricacies, and stage comebacks.
Interestingly, Mario Kart Super Circuit also has short courses, but changed to the 3 laps like Mario Kart 64 before it, so you can directly feel the impact of this decision by playing that game. Having said that, I believe it was the right choice to have 3 laps for that game, since it was for a handheld console meant for playing in short bursts.
One final thing i’d like to touch on from the courses, is how item boxes were handled in the original game. They’re pads on the ground that you run over, rather than the 3d item boxes introduced later in Mario Kart 64, which have become the norm. That’s not the main difference though, the fact that they don’t regenerate is. It’s obvious that this plays heavily into the item balance of the game. In recent Mario Karts, these boxes regenerate so quick as to almost never be gone, nearly impossible for a player to avoid. The result is an abundance of items and the chaos that comes with it.
Anyway, a local VHS rental store had a SNES setup in some kind of arcade unit where you’d pay a dollar for 10 minutes of gameplay. I’ve tried to find this thing online but with no luck whatsoever. There is something called a “Super System”, but i’m positive the one near me was different. I remember clearly that it had an actual joystick because that was my first time playing Super Mario Kart!
And I absolutely hated it. How did this game get 96%? Well, as it turns out, the game doesn’t play so well with an arcade joystick and buttons. Big surprise, I know! The reviewers at CVG were blessed with normal controllers. But my stupid ass quickly moved onto something else and forgot about the game, until one of my friends happened to pick it up. I remember saying to him “you know, that game is pretty bad”… oh how wrong I was.
Giving it a proper go on several (increasingly more frequent…) visits to his house, I started to see how awesome the game was. We would play Grand Prix mode with the CPU or Battle mode mostly. I would borrow the game for weeks on end long after he lost interest and still play GP. I got so good I made my own little game of tallying up the seconds I won by in each of the 5 courses of a cup. Battle mode was a favourite at sleepovers with friends. All up, we must have poured thousands of hours into the game.
So, why is it awesome? If you’ve seen or read recent reviews of the game, or worse, played it for 5 minutes on NSO and condemned it yourself, you probably think it has “awful controls”, just like I did when I first played it on that arcade unit. Well, i’m here to tell you that that’s a you problem. There is almost no racing game of this era, and hell, since, that controls as tightly as the original Super Mario Kart.
When you first pick up the controller and attempt a powerslide, sure, you’ll slide right off the outside of the track. “Game’s SHIT man!” and turn it off, right? Wrong. It’s not even that complicated! In this game, you simply correct/straighten up the slide with another hop to the opposite side. Bang, you’re not sliding and now you’re screaming directly towards the next corner. I swear, that one little detail is lost on everyone who played a later game in the series first. Perhaps these players are so tuned to analog sticks, they cannot appreciate the immediacy afforded by a dpad. When you slide, you’re on the edge of your seat, about to go off that edge of the course at any second, but then you whip it back in an instant and keep going. The game strikes the perfect balance of the karts feeling completely out of control and yet totally under your control at the same time.
All of a sudden, courses that you could barely navigate before become not just manageable, but demolishable. You’re hugging the inside of corners and dodging obstacles like a racing GOD. You pick up some coins, you notice your speed improves. You don’t hit things for long enough and your engine starts humming at a top speed. Then you notice your character doing an odd tilting animation when you exit a powerslide just right and… is that… a mini-turbo? Yes, yes it is, a fact sadly lost to time and most people playing the series now, I think. Now you’ve entered the holy immersed state and you’re lapping the CPU no problem. Winning by skill and not items (remember this part for later reviews lol). The door to Time Trial mode opens and the glorious optimising begins.
I started by talking about the controls because that is the linchpin which holds the entire game together. But it doesn’t stop there. The courses are designed to take full advantage of them, testing your ability to push the controls to their absolute limit. One thing you might be aware of from reading Mario Kart discussions online, is how people will often complain that the tracks have become too wide. Not so in the original game, where there are often stretches just 3 or 4 karts wide that you have to navigate. This is how you’d start to design a racing game you see, by deciding upon the size of the characters and their relation to the track. When a course is 15-20 times the size of the kart, sure, it’s still a challenge to drive the proper racing line, but it’s not as intense as NEEDING to drive the proper racing line. Nowadays, a track’s design is assessed by its aesthetics, and a “good course” is one with the most interesting theme. Sigh.
So let’s talk about the courses and what makes them awesome. I'm too lazy to post pictures so please view the course maps on the excellent Mario Wiki!
The first course is a simple affair no doubt, but even here you can see the careful consideration of its elements. The first corner? A slight bend. Get that turbo start and whiz around it no problem. Head down the main straight and the next corner is trickier, and you’ve got to navigate pipes to boot. No worries, helps you figure out the correct line. Round that bend and we get our first hairpin, that is quickly followed by another sharp turn. If you’ve got a mushroom or star you can dash across the dirt to cut them out. You’re not done yet though, the lap ends with a sweeping left where you can safely hold that powerslide the whole way through!
Donut Plains 1
Right after the start, the racers converge on a tiny bridge, which incidentally, is great place to drop a hard to avoid banana! But you may notice cornering is a little trickier here, as the dirt is more slippery than the road. As you round the bend you spot a shortcut hole in the wall, but you don’t want to attempt it without a mushroom or a star. Next up is a series of tight but long corners around dirt patches, the first of the different surfaces you’ll come across. You’re likely to accidentally trigger your first mini-turbo around the 2nd of these bends, before the final long turn - where you can take the inside line over the dirt, at the risk of possibly skidding out.
Ghost Valley 1
The difficulty starts to rise on this course, which introduces blocks that disappear if you bump into them, leaving an increasing risk of falling off on later laps. We’ve got a chicane followed by the first of 2 jump bars - there’s no gap, so you’re generally safe (unless you’re sliding off course!), but the next bar shows that you can clear gaps. While you’re taking that you spy another gap to the left that looks like it’d cut off the entire last corner. You’ll need a feather or a very well timed jump at speed to clear that gap though, and you better watch out for the turn at the end, or else it’s off the other side!
Bowser Castle 1
Hazards about in this course. On the first lap, thwomps hover above the course, but from lap 2 onwards, they slam down, potentially restricting your line. We’re introduced to speed boost pads, 2 in quick succession that’ll make the next corner a challenge if you’re not paying attention. Jumps over lava (careful not to go too fast and into the lava!), while avoiding falling thwomps are just before the final turn
Mario Circuit 2
Things have gotten a fair bit more complicated at Mario Circuit. You better hold left immediately at the start to get around the first corner, but then watch out for the pipe chicane afterwards. Get through unscathed and you have some sweeping bends followed by the tightest hairpin so far. Speed boost pads launch you over the track towards the finish line, but be careful where you’re pointing or else you’ll hit the pipes on the other side. Time it just right and you can start your slide in mid-air to nip between them.
Choco Island 1
Game not slippery enough for you? Have some chocolate. If you haven’t mastered straightening out of slides yet, this course will teach you, but not before you hit several piranha plants on the side of the track. Jump bars abound as well, and you’ll need to hit the right ones to avoid the heavy chocolate patches that slow you right down.
Ghost Valley 2
This course starts with a quick turn to the right then left. You’ll see another gap you can clear if you have a feather (or speed and a lot of luck). Else, it’s a slippery wide turn. Lots of the walls have no blocks this time, and some parts of the track are cut away as well. Entering the final straight, stick close to the inside if you can, to hit the speed boost pad. Careful with that jump bar right after though!
Donut Plains 2
A challenging course with many narrow roads, made harder by the slippery dirt. You’ll really have to control your skids to avoid the grass here. Not only that, monty moles threaten to latch onto your kart and slow you down, on several of the corners. Hit jump a few times to shake them off.
Bowser Castle 2
It becomes apparent here that the Bowser stages are tests of endurance, as they’re some of the longest tracks in the game. Filled with 90º turns, this one seems simple but again the thwomps and jumps over lava complicate matters. You do have a few choices when it comes to which way to go mid course - including a jump over the lava if you’ve got a feather. Towards the end, you’ll really have to watch your speed or end up in the drink!
Mario Circuit 3
We’re back on the road but just because you’re not sliding as much doesn’t mean you can coast through this course. Pretty much every turn is tight, and one midway is the sharpest hairpin the game. You can still take it at speed, but you’ll want to have the right line to avoid the 4 pipes on the exit. Towards the end there’s a gap in the barrier if you have a mushroom to clear the dirt, otherwise you’re taking some turns flanked by pipes that’ll get in your way if you’re not careful.
Koopa Beach 1
Slippery when wet is the name of the game here. A short course that is essentially just a circle, but there are some shortcuts you can take if you brave the shallow water. Also be sure to avoid the mossy part near the end, which really slows you down.
Choco Island 2
Now your slide control is really put to the test, as the roads are getting thinner and rough outer areas threaten to slow you down at every step. The hardest part is the series of tight turns into a thin stretch right at the beginning, but you can make it easier if you can take the shortcut through the wall gap. Boost or jump through the chocolate patch to avoid slowing down there too, but watch your angle on those jump pads on the exit!
Vanilla Lake 1
Oh boy, not content with slippery chocolate, the developers saw fit to test us with the ultimate in slippy-slidey surfaces now - everyone’s favourite, the ice course. The path is small and flanked by thick, slower snow patches, deep water and blocks. This time the blocks are there to stop you, but there’s a trick to them: If you jump as you’re about to hit one, you’ll propel forward without losing much speed. Try and keep it straight!
Bowser Castle 3
We’ve reached the final Bowser Castle course and definitely the most challenging. There’s lots of lava jumps including several across a split path. They’re not too different speed wise, so my advice is to take the path with the least CPU travelling it. Afterwards, Thwomps threaten in a tight space so you better hope one of them is up in the air! Rounding that corner you’ve got the choice of 3 lanes, but you’ll only get your choice if you’ve mastered the slide. The left and right sides have a boost pad but that’ll make the next turn trickier. Avoid the thwomps again and you’re onto the final stretch.
Mario Circuit 4
The final Mario Circuit will test your racing lines to the max. If you’re not taking the corners optimally, you’re definitely going to end up on the slow dirt. Avoid the pipes and keep it together, try and take the shortcut through the gap in the wall near the end.
Donut Plains 3
This course is home to some of the thinnest roads in the game. Control your skids carefully on the dirt to enter the bridges straight, and be careful to jump over the holes in the bridge too. On the exits, make sure you have the right line or else you’ll end up off course and in another water hazard
Koopa Beach 2
This water course presents a different challenge to the first. On the right you’ve got the water and on the left the moss both threatening to slow you down. Halfway through the course you have no choice but to slip through the shallow water, where you have to avoid cheep cheeps and deep water. It’s tempting to cut close to the moss near the end, but it can cost you the race if you’re not careful.
Ghost Valley 3
The most difficult ghost course owing to all holes and wall-less sides. There’s a shortcut on the right, after the items boxes should you have a feather, but make sure you’re lined up well or else the next section with no walls will be tricky
Vanilla Lake 2
Is this course the ultimate test of your sliding technique? Perhaps. Here, you’ve still got to avoid several hazards, most notably the entire centre of the track being water. Of course, the developers were nice enough to really test you by putting obvious sheet of ice shortcuts throughout. A real pro will navigate this course in seconds thanks to those, but regular people are best off taking it slow and just cutting a little of water at the tips of the corner.
Rainbow Road
It turns out that this is the ultimate test of your sliding technique. Walls? Where we’re going we don’t need walls. Not content with making the entire track surrounded by death, there’s also the hypnotic effect of the colours, carefully (or cruelly?) placed jump bars, and even some thwomps to deal with. Mastery of this course means mastery of the game though!
Ok, for all those modern players, yes, the courses are flat. Boo hoo. Maybe, just maybe it was a good thing. Try playing a racing game from this era with elevation and tell me how well you can see the corners going up a hill!
Not just the courses by themselves are great, but the order they’re arranged is too. There’s an escalation of difficulty throughout each cup, that lets off a little for the first course of the next. It actually makes me wonder how they approach difficulty design for DLC tracks these days.
Another important decision in the design of the game was the length of the tracks. It was said in some interview that they couldn’t do a 2 player F-Zero due to the size of the tracks, and so the tracks in Super Mario Kart were made shorter to accommodate multiplayer modes. You’ll often hear people say that F-Zero is the faster game and well, that doesn’t paint the whole picture. The cars may go faster, but with the courses far shorter here, often the sense of speed can be similar or even stronger. Particularly on Rainbow Road, you barely have a second to blink before each straight ends and the corner looms. It’s an incredibly intense experience, something that unfortunately has been completely lost in the later games, as Rainbow Road became more about the spectacle than the challenge.
These short courses also tie into the fact you do 5 laps instead of 3 as seen in later games. This is the only game in the series to have 5 laps, but given the length of courses, it was the right choice. You get to spend a good amount of time on the courses and learn their intricacies, and stage comebacks.
Interestingly, Mario Kart Super Circuit also has short courses, but changed to the 3 laps like Mario Kart 64 before it, so you can directly feel the impact of this decision by playing that game. Having said that, I believe it was the right choice to have 3 laps for that game, since it was for a handheld console meant for playing in short bursts.
One final thing i’d like to touch on from the courses, is how item boxes were handled in the original game. They’re pads on the ground that you run over, rather than the 3d item boxes introduced later in Mario Kart 64, which have become the norm. That’s not the main difference though, the fact that they don’t regenerate is. It’s obvious that this plays heavily into the item balance of the game. In recent Mario Karts, these boxes regenerate so quick as to almost never be gone, nearly impossible for a player to avoid. The result is an abundance of items and the chaos that comes with it.
It’s by design, no doubt, but so too was the design in Super Mario Kart. It became a battle to get those item boxes since they were in short supply! They became targets for laying items because you knew your opponents had nowhere else to get an item! And yes, they resulted in a game that was less about luck of the draw and more about skill.
I haven’t even touched on Battle Mode. Did we play more battle than races back then? I couldn’t say… but I know we played it a shitload!
There’s four courses here but I’m going to eliminate discussion of Battle Course 1, since it’s essentially superseded by Battle Course 4, and Battle Course 3, set on ice, is just too random to be that much fun apart from the odd game here and there.
Battle Course 2 and 4 though? They are masterful pieces of game design. Filled with 90º corners so you can skillfully evade shells? Check. Treacherous straights and wide open areas? Check. Barriers you can jump over or into for a last second save or to fire a shell on that unsuspecting opponent? Check. It’s crazy that basically 3 simple elements is all that comprises them but it resulted in endless hours of fun.
I haven’t even touched on Battle Mode. Did we play more battle than races back then? I couldn’t say… but I know we played it a shitload!
There’s four courses here but I’m going to eliminate discussion of Battle Course 1, since it’s essentially superseded by Battle Course 4, and Battle Course 3, set on ice, is just too random to be that much fun apart from the odd game here and there.
Battle Course 2 and 4 though? They are masterful pieces of game design. Filled with 90º corners so you can skillfully evade shells? Check. Treacherous straights and wide open areas? Check. Barriers you can jump over or into for a last second save or to fire a shell on that unsuspecting opponent? Check. It’s crazy that basically 3 simple elements is all that comprises them but it resulted in endless hours of fun.
It comes back to the controls: whipping around these tight corners never felt so good. What you learned against the CPU racers you can apply in full here. And there’s more to learn too, about the item usage. In short time, you’ll become a master of sending out the green shell on an arc and SMACK, ZZZTTTT. That satisfying sound of taking out your opponent and glancing to their screen to see them spin out. Can you get another item before they recover and hit them again?! Banana in your way? Lay your own and take advantage of the SNES’ limited memory not being able to place more items, causing the one in front of you to disappear! Saved! Ah i have so many memories of this mode as if it was yesterday.
The multiplayer highlights the one minor flaw of the game, and that is simply that in single player you only have half the screen. The bottom half is a map or rear view and while it’s a cool effect, it would have been better had we had the full screen view (thankfully, this was rectified in every game since). Having said that, the half-screen view is not really a hindrance either, so it ultimately doesn’t matter.
Phew, what a game. What a fucking game! 96% was too low.
The multiplayer highlights the one minor flaw of the game, and that is simply that in single player you only have half the screen. The bottom half is a map or rear view and while it’s a cool effect, it would have been better had we had the full screen view (thankfully, this was rectified in every game since). Having said that, the half-screen view is not really a hindrance either, so it ultimately doesn’t matter.
Phew, what a game. What a fucking game! 96% was too low.
I can still put it on today and the immediacy of the controls, the satisfaction of the turning, it’s just as good as the day it finally clicked for me back then. Hopefully, reading this means it’ll click for whoever reads this too. So what’s a hardcore Mario Kart player? One that still plays Super Mario Kart, you crybaby little shits.
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