Mario Kart: The History of This Beautiful Game

     Mario Kart is a racing game where the main objective is to get first place. At first it may be fun to play with friends, but once you play it with your friends, things might not go as well as you expected it to be. You might yell at your friends for being not so great people for running into you with a banana. Or you might get blue-shelled by your mom, making you regret giving her a present on her birthday. Well time to tell the history of Mario Kart and why we love and hate it. Also, I will not count the arcade games since those aren’t Nintendo owned.

     So, let’s start with the first Mario Kart. It started on August 27, 1992 (September 27,1993 for Europe). Where the first Mario Kart was first released into the world. The game was called Super Mario Kart and will start the entire Mario Kart franchise. The Game was released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Although I wasn’t alive during the time, many people enjoyed the game due to it not only being a racing game but a Mario game on top of that. Also, for being a game in the 1900’s the characters feel like they have character. What I mean is that the characters express their emotions when they win or lose. Super Mario Kart also revolutionized the Racing Genre as a whole. Due to the release of the games many people played games like F-Zero, since the game was failing during the time of its release. Although it is the most “fair” Mario Kart due to the lack of items and only two players can play. The games that will come after that are the ones that could ruin friendship.

     After the success of Super Mario Kart in the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) there is Mario Kart 64 on the Nintendo 64 (N64). Released in Japan on December 14,1996, February 10,1997 for North America, and June 24, 1997, for Europe (you can also play it on your Nintendo Switch with the Online Expansion Pass). To figure out what the cheapest option is for the Online Expansion Pass, read “Switch Online: Your Cheapest Option” on the Five Star Journal website. It is the first 3D Mario Kart. Although it may look like a downgrade from the first due to having less track, but I think since it is a 3D Mario Kart more of the tracks have more personality and are more lively due to it being 3D as opposed to 2D where the creativity of the maps are lackluster due to the limitations among their systems respectively. (SNES and N64) Also the characters have voices. You may think that it might be annoying since the characters are going to say “Wahoo”, “Let's a go” and “Ah Woah, Woah, Woah”, but I think it gives them more personality since you know when you use a mushroom or get hit by some random green shell. It is also a four-player game, so you can play with three of your friends and yourself. The game also makes the items very broken. Like the hitboxes on most of the items have a larger hitbox compared to the first Mario Kart. Meaning that it is easier to troll your friends and family. And the results are also really unforgiving. Imagine you and your friends play Mario Kart 64. You are about to get first and one of your friends throws a red shell at you and you don’t have a banana, so you placed 4th with your friends and you see the results. You see your character driving by yourself on the hill of Peach’s Castle as your friends placed 1st, 2nd and 3rd. So you said GG’s to your friends and never played the game again and have hated your friends ever since. Then you play the game again next week and question yourself whether that was a mistake, or you can get your getback.

     After Mario Kart 64 there needed a Mario Kart title for the Game Boy Advance. So, Mario Kart Super Circuit was born. Released in Japan on July 21, 2001 ( North America on August 27, 2001 and worldwide on September 14, 2001) I am not going to talk a lot about this game since it is meant to be a remaster of the first Mario Kart but with more tracks and made the game a bit more chaotic by making it more than two players. Up to four players can play like Mario Kart 64, but the process is a bit more complicated as to play on multiplayer. Since Bluetooth wasn’t really a big thing in the early 2000’s you needed an adapter to play, and your friends needed an adapter to play. They fixed this on the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pass, but you need a Nintendo Switch and the Online Expansion Pass to play. Like I said earlier, this is more of an improvement on the First Mario Kart and that it is the First portable Mario Kart, nothing that special. Sorry to the Hardcore Mario Kart Super Circuit fanboys.

     This Mario Kart game breaks the tradition that previous titles did. On November 7,2003 the Mario Kart Game for the Nintendo GameCube was Mario Kart Double Dash. You might think “What could be so different about this game?” It is that you control two characters at once or if you’re playing with your friends, you could play separate roles to it. People didn’t like it at first since it took away the Mario Kart tradition. Let me explain. In Double Dash you pick two characters and a kart. One character if you are teaming up with a friend, then there are two roles: The Driver and the Lackeys. The Driver, well, drives the car and would try to win the race. Meanwhile the Lackey is in charge with items and as well starting the race with a mini boost. You can swap them mid race if the role you picked was too wacky, weird, or hard. This game also introduced new characters like Waluigi, Petery Piranha, Toadette, etc. as well as new tracks like any Mario Kart game.

     This is what I will be writing about in this article for now. As this is the First article out of two parts. The Next Article would be for the following games. Mario Kart DS, Mario Kart Wii, Mario Kart 7, Mario Kart 8/ MK8 Deluxe, and the arcade titles. I will also talk about how Mario Kart impacted me as a person.