Nintendo Okie

Every franchise has to have a beginning.  Sometimes that beginning is also the end of a franchise, but many times it will go on to live for a long time and spawn a number of different sequels and successors.  Super Mario Kart was the game that put the kart racing genre on the map.  There had been racing games that came before it and racing games that have come since, but that was the first game to give the battle style kart racing its day in the sun.

Developed in 1992 and released in September the game did not start out as a Mario themed racing game.  It originally featured generic characters that hadn’t been developed fully.  The decision to add Mario to the game came about as the designers were just curious to know what it would look like if Mario was in the kart as you drove past him.  The designers thought that it looked much better than the original designs and they kept the theme and built on it.  It was also one of the first SNES games to use split screen multi-player as the main focus of the game and it is rumored that this is also why the game shows split screen even during the single player portions of the game. 

Super Mario Kart was one of the Super Nintendo’s showpieces for Mode 7 graphics.  This is a graphic technique available on the Super Nintendo that allowed designers to create pseudo 3D effects by rotating the world around a character.  Because of that they were able to give the game a depth that was not attainable on most releases at the time.  It received fairly mixed reactions with some outlets saying it made the game gorgeous to look at, while others said it made the game look chunky and ugly.  The screen is split into two portions.  The top screen shows the action on the course as the player drives around.  The bottom screen, during single player shows an overhead map of the track giving you the exact location of every other racer. 

The game centered on you, as the player, selecting one of eight different characters.  Seven of these characters, Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Koopa Troopa, Bowser, and Toad are from the Mushroom Kingdom, the only exception being Donkey Kong Jr.  It also set the standard of the racers being separated into different classes and having different abilities based on that class. The bigger characters like DK Jr and Bowser allowed you to take more punishment without spinning out.  The smaller characters would be easier to knock around the track causing them to lose coins or precious time and positions.  The view was always over your characters shoulder and you could see for very long distances. 

There were two modes for single player that you could choose from; Mario Kart GP and Time Trial.  Mario Kart GP was the main mode of the game an allowed you to choose from one of three circuits initially to race on.  Each of these circuits had five tracks that you would race on.  Finishing in the top four positions earned you points and allowed you to continue to the next track in the circuit.  If you finished below the top four positions you lost a life and had to redo the track.  By finished first in those three circuits you would then unlock the fourth “Special Circuit” that featured the five hardest tracks in the game; including the very first time you would see Rainbow Road, which has been the final track in every Mario Kart game since then.  These tracks ranged from traditional kart circuits labeled as the Mario Circuit to more exotic locations like Donut Plains and Ghost Mansion.  Each of the different circuits had unique elements to set them apart from the others.  The aforementioned Donut Plains had large areas of the track covered in a muddy chocolate that cause you to slide around.  The Ghost Mansion has blocks lining the sides of the course that would fall if they were hit creating gaps the racers could fall through.  Mastering these secrets was the key to finishing higher in the standings.  The other single player mode was Time Trial where you just simply raced each course by yourself trying to obtain the fastest times possible on each lap and the course overall.

Super Mario Kart was one of the first really competitive multi-player games set in the Mario universe and the game really appears to be designed around that aspect.  There were three different multi-player modes available.  Mario Kart GP, which is similar to the single player version, this time with two human racers.  The second was Match Race which saw two human drivers competing through the different tracks with no computer opponents.  The most popular multi-player mode, though, was battle.  In this mode you raced around custom battle arenas with balloons tied to your kart.  Successfully attacking an opponent with an item would cause them to lose a balloon.  The last player standing with at least one balloon was declared the winner.  This mode has been the source of many game nights across the country for many years and has been a staple of the Mario Kart franchise since the beginning.

The idea of power ups in racer has been done many times before, but seems to be most well known in the Mario Kart franchise.  Super Mario Kart gave players the ability to obtain “weapons” by driving over question blocks that were placed at strategic points around the track.  Your position in the standings of that race determined what types of items you would receive.  Many of the franchises most famous items got their start in Super Mario Kart.  Some of the power up in the game included the green turtle shell which you could fire in front of you or behind and it would travel straight until it hit something causing it to bounce randomly around the track.  The banana peel would cause you to spin out, losing time and coins.  The feather allowed you to jump high giving you the ability to leap over gaps in the track shortening your lap times.  The star caused you to become temporarily invulnerable giving you the ability to run over other racers.  You would quickly learn the best way to use these power ups and many people have a favorite that they gravitate towards.  Mine happens to be the fire and forget green turtle shell.  I’ve become deadly accurate with that item shooting it both forwards and backwards and it’s a handy defensive item as well. 

Super Mario Kart just recently became available on Wii’s Virtual Console and if you haven’t played the game that essentially started the kart racing genre, you really should give it a try.  Some of its controls have become outdated and replaced by better methods, but for anyone that remembers this game it very quickly becomes second nature and you remember everything very quickly.  There is still a lot of fun to be had and a lot of remarkable tracks were created with this release, many of which have been revisited with the latest iterations of Mario Kart.  Mario Kart has grown a lot since the beginning being available now on 7 different platforms, including two arcade releases that were playable in arcades in Japan.  I would love for there to be a Mario Kart game that incorporates every track, power up and character ever seen in the franchise to give you the ultimate Mario Kart experience.