How Super Mario Kart Inspired the Karting Scene

Everyone and their mother knows about the Mario Kart series, and now it’s time for us to celebrate its birthday. It’s been so many years since Super Mario Kart first graced us on the SNES. Back then, it was the first mainstream karting game. Sure, there had been others in the form of single player arcade games, but Super Mario Kart was the first to really focus on it. But how did it come to be?

Super Mario Kart: The Origins

Now, after seeing the success of Captain Falcon’s futuristic races in F-Zero, Nintendo wanted to bring out a new racing game. However, they didn’t want it to be like F-Zero, but something new. Something fresh. Instead of a single player game, they wanted something different: a multiplayer racing game with combat elements.

Super Mario Kart was not intended to be a part of the Super Mario series. While they focused on the way the game worked, there was no relation to the franchise. But then a few months later, someone decided to put a racer in overalls. No one could unsee Mario, and so Super Mario Kart was officially born.

But it stuck it out. The Mode 7 graphics used on Super Mario Kart in 1992 were praised by gamers everywhere. Well, until we all looked back and realised “perhaps, hindsight is truly 20/20”. While the graphics haven’t been looked back upon kindly, the game itself? Well, it was always going to be a commercial and critical success.

Super Mario Kart: The Success Story

Truthfully, I had to pull my Switch Lite out to have a go at Super Mario Kart once more while I was writing this article. Sure, I looked at the reviews, of which every one of them was overwhelmingly positive. But I can’t say that I ever played the original version of the game. After all, while the game celebrates its thirtieth birthday, that puts it as a little bit older than myself.

Now, you have a few options with Super Mario Kart: Two-player mode, Mario Kart GP, and Time Trial mode. You could play as eight different characters: Mario, Peach, Bowser, Koopa, Luigi, Yoshi, Donkey Kong Jr., and Toad. Then, there were three different races: Mushroom Cup, Flower Cup, and Star Cup.

Honestly, it’s strange looking back at it now, while it’s easy to play, the Mode 7 graphics really aren’t as great in retrospect. You’ve got to focus so much on the graphics, that you can’t focus on the map at the bottom of the screen. Hell, you can tell that over the years, the formula really hasn’t changed all that much! Aside from an improvement in graphics and tracks, the Super Mario Kart formula has only got better over the years.

You Get a Karting Game, and You Get a Karting Game!

After the success of Super Mario Kart, no one will be surprised to know that every franchise had to get in on Mario Kart’s success. Within two years, Sonic Drift was released, and then never spoken about outside of Japan because it couldn’t live up to its rival’s legacy. I wish I was joking, but honestly, we didn’t see Sonic Drift in the West until they included it as an unlockable minigame in the GameCube version of Sonic Adventure DX.

So many karting games tried so hard to emulate Mario Kart’s combat formula, but they couldn’t. While Street Racer may have added more players, the series managed to remedy this over the years. Since then, there have been so many different karting games, with Sonic improving on the formula until they succeeded, and other franchises making their own. You can now find a karting game in any series you like.

Along with Sonic, you can find Final Fantasy, Crash Bandicoot, Digimon, LEGO, Shrek, South Park and honestly, so much more. That’s just a small number of franchises who tried to emulate Mario Kart, but have they done so with the same success?

A Never-Ending Legacy

 

Since Super Mario Kart, there have been dozens of sequels. Currently, we’re on Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, with the most recent release coming from Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit in 2020. Mario Kart as a series is such a staple, that you can’t think of anything else when it comes to karting games. Even now, it’s a go-to game for families and friends to sit down and play, with no other game reaching the same level of comfort (after a hell of a lot of rage) as Mario Kart does.