Brutal Gamer

Lookin’ Back #19 – Super Maro Kart

By Mike - September 13, 2009 - 08:00 UTC - 1 Comment

The game that started the hundreds of games featuring Mario.  But don’t hold that against it.

Back in the day, Mario mainly appeared in just platformers.  Oh sure, he made cameo appearances in other Nintendo games, but he only ever starred in the Mario Bros games.  But in the SNES area, Nintendo decided to do something different with everyone’s favourite Bowser stomping plumber.  So in 1992, Super Mario Kart was born.

In Super Mario Kart, you had 8 characters from the Mario series, and you race karts around racetracks based on various levels of Mario games, such as your green coloured standard Mario Circuit levels, through to the Koopa Beach water and island courses, where you could fall into deep water and have to be fished out by Lakitu.  Then there was the great Ghost Valley levels, based on the ghost houses from Super Mario World, and featuring barriers around the edge of the track, which would disintegrate when you hit them, causing a hazard of falling off the course.

The first Super Mario Kart game saw the first of one course name that has appeared in every single game in the franchise since.  That course is Rainbow Road.  While the other Mario Kart games seemed to concentrate on being the longest courses in the game, the original version was a small course with a lot of tight turns and no barriers, which meant you couldn’t afford to simply charge around the course too quickly.  It was one of the toughest tracks in the game, and also one of the most fun, especially if you knock your mates off the edge in multiplayer.  Possibly less fun if you’re the one falling off, though.

There were a few modes to play in the game.  There was the standard Mario Kart GP mode, in which you competed in groups of 5 tracks in order to get the highest number of points.  Then there was the Time Trial mode, in which you could unlock Nintendo ghosts if you got a quick enough time.

Probably the most fun mode in the game, however, was the Battle Mode.  In this mode, you went head to head with another driver.  Both competitors have 3 balloons strapped to their karts, and the aim is to get rid of your opponent’s balloons using the weapons picked up by driving on the questions marks dotted around the track.

These weapons included banana skins, which could be used to make other karts spin.  There were also, as this is Mario, turtle shells involved.  These came in two forms.  There were the green shells which, when fired, travelled straight ahead.  The other shells were red, and when fired, they would home in on whoever was nearest in front of you.  And there was that other Mario staple, the Star which made you invincible.

The game was a massive success, being the 3rd best selling SNES game of all time with over 8 million sales.  A lot of other games would soon follow, seeing Mario turn his hand to golf and tennis amoung other things.  Also, it was crediting with starting the kart racing ‘sub genre’, which saw a lot of good and not so good similar games released.  But Super Mario Kart was, and still is, a superbly fun game and a great multiplayer experience.

And just for fun, here’s a reminder of what SNES commercials were like back in the day.

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