The Original Super Mario Kart on SNES: Not Just a Race to the Finish

Back in 1992, there were not a lot of racing games, mostly some of them were just simple race to the finish line like Top Gear, Rad Racer, Excitebike and F-Zero, but then one game had finally made its debut to change all that and had created one of the most popular formula in many kart racing game today. That game was none other than Super Mario Kart (SMK), the first ever kart racing game to let players choose a favorite Nintendo characters on a mission to race to the finish line.

Besides racing to the finish line, SMK had one feature not similar to other racing game at the time, the power-ups. The power-ups can be pick-up while a driver accelerate into a "?" platform within the track, once the driver run over the "?" platform, the top of the item box will cycle through the available power-ups, not all power-ups or items are available on any one tracks at any given time so some tracks might not reveal the feather, also the chances of a driver getting a good power-up is rare. By being in first place the player won't likely get a red shell but instead maybe a green shell, a couple of coins, or a banana pill, but if they are the one in last place or on any place lower than fourth, they will likely get a red shell, the invincible star, a turbo mushroom, the feather, the lightning bolt, or the boo item. Because the power-ups play a big role in SMK, a simple race to the finish line is not always simple especially when racing against other CPU control racers either in Grand Prix or on a match race. Another mention is that both players can also team up against CPU players so that's a good point there; however, each player will need to decided who wants first place.

Also besides the power-ups, there are over 15 tracks of competition and four different cups to take each with there own set of tracks. When all four cups are completed, player can get a chance to take the ultimate Special Cup, a competition circuit made for the expert racers. Besides the cup, there are also classes that a player can choose before they can choose their cups. There are three different classes to choose and each class will determine how challenging the CPU racers will be and how fast the racers can go.

SMK also made famous by not just making this a racing game but also a fun free-for-all multiplayer competition title. There are two multiplayer modes that lets race against each other to the finish, they can still try to slow one down but the race can be tough, the latter is a battle mode where both players had to try to shoot power-ups at one another to knock out the three balloons from each other and the player who shoot out the most balloons wins, its kind of creative and fun. A let down to these mode is that two-players are required so if there only one player, these modes won't be all that fun, but it would be great if we could had the CPU join on the fun as well in battle since sometime there won't be another player for the other to challenge.

Then we had the roster of selectable characters to choose from ranging from the mid-class Mario, to the light class Peach to the heavy hitter Bowser and DK to the super steerers Toad and Koopa Troopa. It's quite a good roster especially since this game was the only one where Bowser can be playable for the first time in a Mario game. Also one feature that really brings in the challenge in this game is that players can also shrink there character to hype up the challenge. It's too bad this feature was not incorporated in the many sequels after, the good part if that once your character shrink, no matter how many times they got run-over they will never be revert back to their normal size; however, if they pick-up the mushroom power-ups shoot by CPU Peach or Toad, they could be revert back to normal size but if both players choose both Peach and Toad, this condition will be even more challenging.

In conclusion, SMK had really made an impact on the racing genre, many followers like Crash Team Racing and Konami Krazy Racers all had followed in its footsteps but did nothing to improve the genre. If you're a racing fanatics and like kart racing games, than SMK is the game for you, since this game had not being released for the Wii's Virtual Console yet, you can find the cartridge version online or if you could, you can at least experience the sequel which is played much better than this and had more power-ups and better sterring but overall, SMK is truly a racing masterpiece, it's because it that we got Mario Kart DS or Mario Kart: Double Dash!! in the first place.